You Relationship Highlights and Key Takeaways

How do you know you're in a strong healthy relationship? Because I think up until now the only marker we've had, which I don't agree with, is we never argue. So, a lot of people will be like, "Oh, I have a great relationship. We never argue." Right? Which is That sounds scary. 100 I agree, but I feel like that's been our only metric Yeah. of how we perceive. If we say someone has a great relationship, like, "They never argue. Have you seen them? Like, it's great, right?" Like, it's not We don't have more than that. We don't have a bigger grading exercise. Yeah. We do length. So, we say, "Oh, they've been together for 30 years. They must have a great marriage." So, we use length as a marker of success.

Right. We use not arguing or like they rarely have, you know, disagreements or whatever it may be, as a marker of success. And we have, "Oh, they have a beautiful family." Like, if they have kids and it's It feels like we have very basic markers to assume that someone has a healthy relationship. How do we make sure we're in a strong healthy relationship? What does that look like? First of all, I would say that kind of what we said earlier, that kind of stance. When you spend time with a couple, you have they build a certain There's a way that there's an atmosphere

around them that you can it's palpable. And if the atmosphere around them is of a certain kind of mutual respect, adoration, a certain kind of acceptance, that is a good relationship. That is a good world to live in. They've created a world in which they're there's space for them to thrive. So, it's sort of the music of a relationship. Is it a music of like mutual respect, adoration, or is it uh a music of gotcha. This is where you failed. This is where you messed up. So, that's one dimension. I would say if a couple is uh changing together, meaning is there room for each of them to change at their own speed and together as a couple? Or do they go

through changes and evolutions? That's a really good quality of the relationship that it's it's you know, that it doesn't break under pressure, but it changes under pressure. That's that's a very strong quality. I mean, couples that don't argue scare me. I don't know what how they what happens there. What Do they just not talk? Or do they not reveal ways in which they're different? Or that's scary. Um Tell me more on that. I like that. Like what How do you not never argue? Like what Are you just the same person? Have you become like enmeshed with each other and everything about you that is different, you just repress or dissociate? Are you so afraid of

conflict? Are you Where are you each? Have you vanished? It just seems unreal. I think the ability to face differences and back to what we were talking about earlier, find how have you faced your differences? How do you work through your differences? Is what's really interesting about a relationship. What would you say are the top three things you hear when someone first comes in to your office? I often joke about it that most couples come in saying that they have problems in communication. But the thing is when you guide people into how to communicate better and how to really speak and listen to each other and get to the heart of the

issue, usually there real issues that are underlying the issues of communication and often people make communication difficult because it's hard for them to touch the real issues. So, they defensively create problems in communication. So, I think if I had to like summarize it in the most succinct way, I would say the real issue that couples face is that they're building a relationship or living with another person who's different from them. And that is really hard. It's very exciting. It's a source of growth. It's it's a source of desire. It's a source of lots of good things, but it's also incredibly difficult and annoying.

Whether it's like the small habits of another person or the deepest core of who they are and their values and their politics. There are many ways in which the otherness of your partner infringes on you and puts you in all sorts of like difficult positions. Deeper under, I think part of it is how do you respond to otherness? How do you respond to someone who's different from you in the smallest way and in the biggest way? And for some of us differentness poses a lot of issues, a lot of problems. It feels intrusive. It makes you question your own beliefs. It's you immediately get into questioning who's right, who's wrong, who's top, who's bottom.

Otherness can trigger a lot of stuff. Whatever the otherness is, there's a space of difference and you don't understand why you're different and you immediately start building theories that are basically meant to answer the question I how am I right and what's wrong with you? Right? Because difference we can't just It's very hard for us to just let difference sit there and just say we're just different. And how are we going to move with this difference? What's the best way to move with it? We immediately start like involving I don't know what it is. It's like our ego or something about who we are that's at question with difference and that's where a lot of the trouble starts coming in. Part of what

happens in couples work and you know you don't know [clears throat] you don't have to do it through therapy but what happens is you start tracking the automatic way that you assign all these scripts to your partner to avoid just dealing with the discomfort of otherness. I think of it sometimes like a thorn that gets stuck in you that disrupts your way of thinking about things. Like suddenly there's another way of doing things and you're like wait a minute. Do I have to think about how I'm doing things at all? Do I have to question what I'm doing and how am I going to respond to that provocation? Mhm. And what's the difference between like I feel like for a lot of people they maybe in the beginning they'll just

fold and do what their partner wants because it's easier. Right. And then maybe many years later they'll be like I changed for you. I did that for you. I did all these things for you but you didn't value me and you know you haven't changed or whatever it may be. Totally. There's a lot of different versions of that. That's one version. What's the right balance between looking for the right solution and looking for I'm not a fan of the word compromise. Mhm. What are your thoughts on the word compromise? First of all couples need to abandon the idea that one of them is completely right and one of them is wrong.

Right? You want to approach the difference with the idea that you're equal partners that you each have a valid point of view even if it's different. And that's actually not an easy thing to get to. It's so hard. So hard, right? I see that being the biggest challenge for couples. Yes. And it would be interesting to think about like why is it so hard for us? But it's very hard. But once you approach a difference in terms of it just simply being two equal partners struggling with difference, then you want to create a space, and I agree with you that to simply compromise is sometimes just a quick fix and it kind of it's like a band-aid that underneath

it can breed resentments and you can eventually somehow go back to the idea that it's not fair, I compromise more than you, or but to do what you're suggesting doing, which is to really put both minds to it and arrive at a conclusion together, is actually really hard. You have to overcome both a lot of your own convictions, selfish needs, and really work for the good of the relationship, of the total, the total good. That's why I often say that couples form between them like a political system. It's like the first political system of how do you resolve difference? Are you going to be like autocratic or democratic in terms of how you resolve a difference?

I like that. You know, ideally you want to create conditions where it stops being about who's right, who's wrong, but again it's for the good of everyone. Like the you ideally you want kind of the questions of the ego to kind of drop to the background. And to get there, there are many ways to get there, but um I know what I try to do in my practice is to create first of all, a sense of you know, what people call now in popular language like a safe space. And what does that mean? It means a space in which what matters to you in a deep way is heard, is respected. You may not necessarily get exactly your way, but you feel on a basic human level that your dignity, your the things you care about that really matter to you are seen and respected and

that whoever's negotiating with you will take that into account, not just kind of, you know, bulldoze over you. And when people feel cared for in this way by the therapist or eventually by their partner, they're willing to do a lot. I think people were all mostly we have like an incredibly generous, creative spirit within us that if we stop feeling threatened, we want to operate from there for the better of everyone. And I think when you get to a solution where one person feels, "Oh, I got my way and the other one didn't." It never ultimately feels good. It might feel good in the moment like you got a momentary win, but you're left with this kind of uh churning, uncomfortable feeling that you took something that you

shouldn't have taken from someone. Yeah. If a couple's stuck in the blame game, Mhm. like, "Look, this is all your fault." And then the other person's like, "Well, I've been trying my best, you know, but you it's really what you've been doing." How do you start rewiring that conversation? What does it take? What are the steps to getting out of the blame game which seems to be such a common place? Right. It's big. There's no I There's no one way because people get stuck in that blame game which is pernicious for different reasons. My job and when people are in that kind of pattern is to convince each of them to kind of release the grip they have,

like be a little less convinced and sure about their own narrative. Just get a little less stubborn about your narrative and start getting curious about other ways to see things and then start getting curious about yourself. Rather than hyper-focus on your partner and put everything outside like try to pull back from that hyper-focus and start asking yourself questions. Why does this thing bother me so much? What is the thing that is like making me crazy? Like if we went back to like the example of like the dinner parties like why is it so important to clean right after? What's the fear? If the if

the dishes sit there for another 2 hours, what's the issue? Like look back at yourself. Don't focus on your partner. What's he doing not doing? What's getting stirred up in you? And usually you find really interesting things there. Like when people are really willing to like pull away from their partner and look into themselves, they're like oh, this is really interesting. This is kind of reminding me of blah and then suddenly it's less about the partner and there's a whole world to discover about yourself. And the whole intensity of blame goes down and then people get curious about each other.

You know, and you're going to be like oh yeah, I noticed that your mom is like so fastidious and she's so afraid of germs and what happened to her when she was a kid and like a whole world opens and the whole blame thing becomes less interesting. What's the first hard question you should ask yourself in a relationship? Maybe am I ready to let someone else in with their otherness with the challenge to my narcissism. Am I ready for that? This is sort of following everything we've been saying. That's a great question. Can I give? Yeah, can I give?

Yeah. And can I hold space Mhm. for someone else to have to go through their transformation. Yeah. Because chances are they're not going to come fully formed. Right. And even if they're perfect on my wedding day or right now, chances are they're going to go through stuff. Yeah. And being honest with myself, cuz I think sometimes we feel guilty. I know a lot of people who say to me, "Jay, I would have stayed with him. Like there's someone that they're dating. They're not married. They're not in a committed relationship. They're like, "I would have stayed with him, but

I don't think I can for what he has to go through and grow through." Wow. You know, he's not ambitious. He needs to figure out his career. He's struggling with his mental health. Like I don't know if I want to be the person to go through it with him. Right. Although I would also say in that case, You're not ready. You're not ready and no one wants to be in a relationship where their partner is just waiting for them to change for the relationship to really start. You want to feel like your relationship is your home, not the future home you're going to have if you change. Yeah. There's a certain level of acceptance that has to happen. Of course, we want to change and get better and grow with each other, but you can't really be in a

conditional relationship. I think I'm going to love you when you change. I'm going to be generous with you when you change. That's not the real thing. is what people want. Uh that's that's not going to work. I literally feel like we find someone that we find attractive Mhm. and that we enjoy our time with and then we want to change everything else about them. True. Like that's literally what we're looking for. Cuz you meet people who like they'll find the person who actually has everything set up for the future, but we're not attracted to them and we don't like hanging out with them. And so we're

like, "Oh, I can't be with you, obviously." But then we the opposite, we're like, "Oh yeah, you're my person. I'm attracted to you. We love hanging out and having drinks and we have good banter and we can, you know, we can spar verbally. Yeah. And you must be the perfect person for me, even though I don't like anything about your actual life. Well, Like you're not ambitious, you don't have a good career, you don't make enough Like all the stuff that we think's important, right? I would probably frame it differently. Please. I would say the person that you really kind of get hooked onto and feel like you are the person I want to be with, probably has in them components of things that are really important for you to revisit and work on

that are not easy. And don't know that. You don't know that. You just in your gut you're terribly attracted to that person and no matter all the other good partners that seem to have all the good qualities are not sticking and then that one partner, that one person you keep going back to because there's something there. Then the preoccupation with wanting to change that partner is typically some way that you're working through something deep within yourself. Cuz you know, ultimately, I mean, even when people talk about ambition or it's like it's not about that. Like why do you need your partner to be so ambitious? You go be ambitious if you want ambition.

It's it's usually you're working through something. There was a couple on the show that were great example of that where the woman started off with like really intense complaints about her husband that he's not ambitious. ultimately we learned that a lot of it had to do with like her mom and father, like a repeat of some kind of old story that never got resolved between her parents, and she was totally working it out through her husband. And once she got focused on the parents and on her early history, she was suddenly back to like the best friendship in the world with her husband. They were just like so adorable together.

You know, it's it's often something else that creates this kind of you got to change for me. Yeah. Do more people want more intimacy or more sex? I think it depends First of all, it's it's a complicated thing to draw the line between intimacy and sex. How interesting. Okay. And I think it depends very much on the stage of the relationship. Early on, one of the things I mean, we all know that one of the things that binds people, one of the strongest glues, is sex, like passion and excitement about each other and like, you know, wanting to get into bed together. And then

at some point people start coming to terms with like differences, differences in scripts, differences in appetite. I know that the like [clears throat] the stereotype is that men are more focused on sex and want more sex and women want less or it's less important to them. I don't think that's actually true. I think again, it's very hard to make generalizations and it changes between like straight and queer couples, so it's it's really not necessarily about [clears throat] the biology, but um but I think typically there are different focuses for men and women. And then later in the relationship, things change because I think later in the relationship the line between sex and intimacy gets very blurry.

Mhm. And I think generally everyone wants both intimacy and sex. Everyone wants it and everyone wishes it for themselves and wants it in large quantities. Everyone needs it. But they focus on different things. And no one has energy for it. And no one has energy for it and anyway a lot of it is about wanting to feel desire of some sort. That's what it is. That's really what it is. And not necessarily wanting, you know, oh, I need to have it three times a week or I need this or I need that. It's it's it's a lot about the experience of desire and being desired that is really kind of the thing we all want.

The to be living in desire rather than living in a certain kind of deadness. That's ultimately what everyone wants. That's so powerful because it goes back to what we were talking about earlier of like we just want someone to believe in us. Yeah. It's like we just want that feeling of like I have value. I have something to give. I'm I'm desired. I'm needed. And people want to feel desire. To feel desired and also to feel desire for the other. And it's so interesting because it feels like our partners are the people that make us feel the least of everything because it's like our partner makes us feel the least desired. Our partner makes us feel the least important.

We almost have this worry that if I say too many nice things to my partner, they'll get a big head. Or if I'm too nice to them, they'll think that they're better than me. Like I feel like there's a subconscious This isn't something someone would say, but there's this subconscious belief Mhm. of that I shouldn't honor my partner too much because it almost puts me in a weak position. kind of Yeah, like it almost like a feeling of like weakness. Like if I compliment them too much, I'm weaker in this relationship because I'm the one who needs them more. It's a fear of vulnerability, of showing that you depend, showing that you need.

Showing that you desire it puts you in a vulnerable place. Correct. Yeah. But it's I mean I think people everything is. But yeah, people thrive in feeling wanted and appreciated. Anything that makes people more stingy, I think is problematic. Mhm. I think stinginess, withholding is like destructive. Give more. Give, give, give, give freely. Arna, we end every On Purpose interview with the final five. These questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. Okay. So, Arna, these are your final five. Okay. The first question is what is the best relationship advice you've ever heard or received?

Stay in your own lane. The best relationship. Why? How is that How does that Tell me. It means don't intrude on someone else's journey. Like stay in your own lane, do the thing you're supposed to do, and live and [clears throat] let live. Yeah. That's that's the best way to create a good environment for a relationship. Second question, what is the worst relationship advice you've ever heard or received? Don't let him get away with it. Mhm. Why is that bad advice? Cuz that's paranoid. It's like a like be suspicious, be paranoid.

Don't give the benefit of the doubt. Guard your own. It's not a good attitude. Because? Because the way you approach the way you look at a person, speaking of what we've That's what you're going to get back. If you're paranoid about someone, they're going to be bad. Yeah. And it steals your energy. And it steals your energy, right? Question number three, what's something you used to believe was true about couples, but now you have a different view on it. Maybe I used to believe that compatibility is the most important thing. And now I think like I said earlier that the capacity to love someone who's different from you is the best source of growth. So well said.

I love it. I'm I'm like I'm sold on that idea. Great. That's everything. Great. We've been spending too much time trying to find this like perfect match, perfect fit, who's like just like Yeah. There isn't. I think about that with my wife all the time. We are so different. Yeah. We couldn't be more different. Question number four. What is the most difficult relationship you've ever had to help or solve? I have two things that come to mind. One is a relationship in which um I did feel like one in the couple was just too My explanation is that he was just too traumatized and he kept viciously abusing his wife [clears throat] in my presence.

Um and I really tried everything and I believed they really wanted to change, but I tried everything and I had no impact on him. No impact. Like he tried. I sent him to read books. I worked with him individually some of the time. I had to like remove him from the room some of the sessions and do some work. I really put my heart and soul into helping them get out of this like extreme form of like blame and abuse. And um I did not make a dent. Aside from the fact that I felt bad that I couldn't help them it was also really a toxic situation to be in. Like the sessions were just awful for me.

Um So, that was probably the worst. And they didn't they stay together or They actually stayed together. They did. I mean, I think the work eventually did help them um to some degree, but it was awful. When do you know divorce is the right choice? With that couple, I thought divorce was the right choice and they chose not to. I just couldn't imagine like why would a family keep going with that level of toxicity? Um I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but they chose to stay together and that's I mean, people live the way they want to live. What can I do? But, that would have been a situation where I would say that the pain of divorce is worth it because you I

don't think it's a good idea to live in that kind of abusive blamey environment day in day out. If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? Uh Okay. Do no harm. Hm. Do no harm. Beautiful. Yeah.