Dr. Orna Gurlanik: Struggling to Communicate With Your Partner? THIS One Habit Could Slowly Be Destroying Your Relationship! (Here’s How to Catch It Before It’s Too Late!)

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Couples come in basically saying, Doctor, can you change my partner?

I think you guys should just break up and stop torturing each other, or I'm just not the right person for you.

Dr.

Orna Gorolnik is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and a writer.

The star of the groundbreaking show Couples Therapy, she explores the depths of human relationships and trauma.

Everyone feels like they've dated a narcissist.

How accurate are they?

100% accurate.

When you find couples coming with financial issues, is it really about money?

They want to feel like, no, money doesn't matter, but it matters to everyone.

Do more people want more intimacy or more sex?

What's the first hard question you should ask yourself in a relationship?

Can I give?

What about when someone feels I've given them too many chances and they're just not shifting?

That would have been a situation where I would say that the pain of divorce is worth it.

How do you know your relationship is strong enough?

I would say...

The number one health and wellness podcast.

Jay Shetty.

Jay Shetty.

The one, the only Jay Shetty.

Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed.

Today's guest is Dr.

Orna Guralnik, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, best known as the therapist on Showtime series Couples Therapy, where she guides real-life couples with transformative conversations and breakthroughs.

With her expertise in relationship dynamics, trauma, and creating healthy habits, Dr.

Geralnik has started making couples ask the hard questions.

Welcome to On Purpose, Dr.

Orna Geralnik.

Orna.

Thank you, Jay.

Thank you for being here.

As I said to you, this is my favorite topic.

I believe it's one of the most important parts of our lives.

Agree.

And it's the area of our life that seems to hold so much power in our happiness, yet we have zero training, zero education, and zero focus on being good at it.

So having you here is amazing.

You are such a phenomenal expert in this space.

And I want to start off by asking you, what would you say are the top three things you hear when someone first comes into your office?

I often joke about it that

most couples come in saying that they have problems in communication.

Now,

I understand that it looks like a problem in communication because the way couples interact with each other is mostly by talking, although there's a lot of nonverbal talking through one's feet.

But where whatever is going on between them manifests is going to be in their communication.

So couples typically think if only we could communicate better, our problems would be solved.

So that's the number one thing that people come in with.

Then there are particular kinds of,

we could say, content areas that couples come complaining about depending on where they are in their life cycle.

Very common one is division of labor.

It's not fair, who's doing what more.

Questions around intimacy,

whether it's sex or spending time together or connecting, then there are ways in which

their

early childhood manifests in their couple's life.

But I'd say those are like the key areas.

So it sounded like when you were saying people come in and they think communication is the issue,

the look on your face was, that's not really the issue.

Right.

So, what is the issue?

Right.

Well, there are many issues, 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 are real issues that are underlying the issues of communication.

Often people make communication difficult

because it's hard for them to touch the real issues.

So they

defensively create problems in communication.

So when you're asking what are the real issues, at least from my perspective, 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 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.

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking back to it.

I remember when

my wife and I, when we were just dating and when we lived together for a brief amount of time, that was when I was like, oh, I think we could be good together because it was, it felt easy.

to go to work, be in the same space.

We kind of had a good distribution of household responsibilities.

Like we, we felt like we had a flow.

It's really interesting to me because when I look earlier in my dating life and when I speak to so many people myself, sometimes you can be such good partners when you're boyfriend and girlfriend or whatever your makeup may be.

But then when you move in together, you're not as good roommates.

And it feels like that transition is where so much of this is discovered.

Yes, that is probably the first round in which things are discovered, like the living together.

And you can think of it as compatibility.

Some people just have similar habits or

they like the dishwasher loaded a particular way similarly,

and it makes it easy.

But

if you go kind of

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.

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.

And for some people, it's more easygoing.

It's easier to just accept the fact that people have different habits.

Part of it is compatibility, and part of it is like, can you really, are you ready to tolerate another person and to adjust to another person and change in response to letting someone else into your life I'm really appreciating the language with that you're explaining this because I genuinely don't believe I've heard it that simply before and that well and I say that because

I think we often make it about do we have compatibility, do we have chemistry, do we have connection?

And really, you're so right that it's feeling othered or otherness

that really causes all of our conflict.

And when Radi and I first started living together, we found that we had very, a very small example, we had very different routines in how we liked to host and entertain.

So if we had friends over, we both want to have dinner with them.

But then after having dinner, I want to hang out on the couch.

I want to talk to them.

I want to relax.

I want to spend time with them.

Radhi wants to get into the kitchen and clean while everyone's there and then go to hanging.

And I want to hang out with everyone and then I want to go and clean when everyone's left.

Totally get it.

And mine comes from how I was raised.

So that's what we did in my house.

And hers comes from how she was raised.

Now, I don't think there's a better or worse.

I think it's a preference.

But what I found was that when I would hang out straight after eating and I wouldn't clean up, there were times when Radi would see that as me not valuing her.

Right.

Shirking responsibility.

Exactly.

Shirking responsibility or you expect me to do everything.

And that's not how I felt.

Right.

But that's how it came across.

That's why what you're saying resonates with me so strongly because the otherness of activity also leads to the otherness of emotion.

And all of a sudden now you're filling in the gaps of that space of being othered.

So to her, it became, I'm disrespected.

I'm not valued.

You're shirking responsibility.

You're lazy, whatever it may have been.

And for me, it became, well, I'm just trying to hang out.

What's wrong with you?

Why can't you just have fun?

You know, why do you have to be so fixated on cleaning up?

Like, why are you so whatever it may be, right?

So perfect.

Yeah.

Can I

borrow this from my book?

Yeah, yeah, please.

That's it.

Because this is like a perfect example.

And just the way you said it, also, that that's exactly it, that 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:

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.

Like you build theories, like she's building a theory that you're like shirking responsibility or, oh, here is another guy just wanting the woman in the kitchen.

Yeah.

And you're like, oh, here is a wife that doesn't want to have fun.

She's just going to be like nagging me to do this, that, and the other.

I mean, we know the theories.

It's very easy to kind of inject theories in there.

Part of what happens in couples' work, and

you don't have to do it through therapy, but part of 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, 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?

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.

What are your thoughts on the word compromise?

Could you say a little bit more?

Just

short.

Oh, that's interesting.

I don't love.

So, for example, for me, I don't believe, I think compromise is us both saying, well, okay, well, I'll do a little bit of this for you if you do a little bit of this for me.

Whereas to me, it's like, well, can we work together to figure out what makes the most sense and what is actually the most practical, best, effective solution where everyone's happier.

And I don't think that means some, like, for example, with this situation, we have now believed that it is nicer to host as long as Radhi has the peace of mind that everything will be cleaned that evening.

We've come to a conclusion, which I don't think is a compromise for either of us.

It's a feeling that we both found a solution together.

And compromise to me makes me feel like I gave up something or I lost out on something or she did.

And I don't want her to give up something for me that's important.

If she said to me, Jay, it is so important to me that we clean up right away, I would value that and I would do it.

I don't want to do it because I feel forced to or I have to.

That's my issue with it.

I'm thinking about how I work it out with couples when,

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 us.

Yes.

And it would be interesting to think about why it is 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 is like a band-aid that underneath it can breed resentments and and you can eventually somehow go back to the idea that it's not fair, I compromise more than you.

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 interesting I like that sometimes I go back to reminding people of how when you have two kids playing and wanting to play with the same toy like how do you coach kids on what to do in that case.

Do you take turns?

Do you give both kids the same toy?

Do you just remove the kids from the situation and say, oh, they can't play well together?

Do you leave one kid crying, having to compromise in a way that was just really depriving for them and they were not ready for?

All this to say that this solution that you're suggesting, which is to really put your minds together and figure out a solution that is good for everyone, is hard.

I do think it's the best one, but I think it requires a certain kind of honesty and

willing to give up a certain kind of investment, selfish investment in the thing that you believe in.

You have to like relax your convictions.

It makes so much sense to me because I feel like most issues are this.

Yeah.

And most people are not solving this.

Yeah.

And we're lost trying to solve some other puzzle.

And I couldn't agree with you more that whether I'm talking to a family member, a friend, a coaching client, or I'm watching something on TV or hearing from someone about something,

this is the problem.

And this is the root of it, that we don't want to accept that someone else may be right and we may be wrong.

That someone else may have a better idea than us

and ours may be worse.

And that the way their parents did things might actually supersede the way our parents did things.

And we don't like that

because it makes us feel almost disloyal to our own upbringing.

There's like a feeling of I'm betraying what my parents did.

I'm betraying tradition.

There's an ego conflict there of, but this is my identity.

This is who I am.

And by telling me there's another way, a better way, you're almost making me feel like my identity is becoming more and more insignificant day by day.

And I'm losing something that grounds me.

What's going to happen to me if I don't have this identity?

Exactly.

And the loyalty can be to to parents, it can be to

a particular group that you're associated with, it could be to your religion, and it can be to an ideology or a belief system that you feel like yourself kind of depends on.

How do you open up to the idea

that someone else's value

may be helpful without devaluing yourself?

Almost how do you open up to the idea that someone else and you can build something together without feeling like you're losing and merging yourself?

Because I think what's interesting here is the person, often with the better idea,

is also not doing it to find a common solution.

They also just want you to go their way.

And so we're also not being led perfectly if that's.

Right.

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

of everyone.

Ideally, you want kind of the questions of the ego to kind of drop to the background and to really get into the state of mind where both participants feel acknowledged, safe, and they don't have to worry about their identity or their ego or their personal investment.

And they have a feeling that they're going to gain something for the good of the couple or the family or the unit, that there's something that exceeds them that will benefit from this.

And to get there, there are many ways to get there, but

I know what I try to do in my practice is to create,

first of all, a sense of

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,

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, we're 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 churning, uncomfortable feeling that you took something that you shouldn't have taken from someone.

Yeah.

I think the challenge that people experience is like, let's say it's the holidays and

I'm saying to you, I'm like, I know we're going to your family's for Christmas.

I just want you to know that I really feel uncomfortable around your parents because I feel like they're always,

you know, picking up my career or they're always making me feel a bit insecure about something like this, or maybe they're somewhat downplaying some of my achievements or whatever.

I just want you to know that sometimes I feel triggered.

Like, let's say I say that to my partner.

Yes.

Very untrue for my life, but

it's a very common thing for us.

And your partner doesn't have, what I find today is people don't have the capability.

to validate you without feeling like they're invalidating themselves.

So the person responding to that goes, how can you say that about my parents?

They love you.

I mean, they love you.

Like, what are you talking about?

Like, oh my God, they've got you an amazing gift.

Like, it's a surprise.

Like, you don't even know.

Like, you know, oh my God, they were just asking about you yesterday.

And you're like, no, I get that.

I'm not saying they're not loving, but I just feel like I get really triggered because of this, this, and this.

And they're like, look, you're just crazy.

Like, just, you know, don't worry about it.

Like, just, it's not a big deal.

Right.

And it's not that that person is.

Your partner's not being mean, but they don't realize because they're so scared.

Or they'll say something to you like, I can't believe believe you can say that about my parents.

My parents are loving, wonderful people.

And now you feel really hurt and pushed away because you're like, well, wait a minute.

So I find that often when people share how they actually feel,

the person on the receiving side doesn't know how to receive that.

Totally.

Because they're scared that if they accept that, then they have to accept that their parents are the worst people on the planet or whatever else comes with that criticism.

How do we kind of wrap our head around that?

Yeah, you're capturing something very significant.

I think, first of all, just to understand why is that kind of moment so difficult before even trying to think of the solution, I think one of the things it brings up for people, let's say to go with the example you're raising, it brings up both conflicting loyalties, what you were saying earlier, loyalty to your family of origin, loyalty to your culture, loyalty to yourself, your sense of goodness, versus your loyalty to taking care of your partner and caring about their feelings.

That's a real inner conflict that that kind of predicament puts the receiving partner in.

They're conflicted between these loyalties.

Just to underline something here, to be in a state of inner conflict is difficult.

It's difficult for all of us.

We like simple solutions.

We like right or wrong.

We like good or bad.

We don't like, I love my parents, they're awesome, they've taken such good care of me, but they're also hurting my partner.

It's very uncomfortable for all of us to be in inner conflict.

So

to understand that putting your partner in that position is already asking them to sit in a difficult position for themselves.

So what to do in that case?

I think what I do when I work with couples when they're in that kind of predicament is

I help both of them understand the difficulties they're going through in having the conversation.

Not the solution, but why is the conversation difficult?

Let's say the receiving partner whose parents are criticized, I might slow them down and first of all ask them to

talk about what kind of position that puts them in, like to try to describe the inner conflict it puts them in, like their love for their parents.

And I ask the partner to understand that they're asking their partner to position themselves away from their parents, and that's a hard thing to do.

And I'm asking the receiving partner to understand that

the person who's, let's say, criticizing their parents or talking about being triggered is also a complex person who's talking about having multiple kinds of feelings.

They can both appreciate the parents, appreciate their connection to the parents, and have another kind of feeling.

We're talking about kind of expanding the spectrum of what people can hear and feel, hear from each other, feel in themselves, and calm down about it.

It's okay to have conflicting multiple feelings, and nothing has to be like an immediate resolution.

Okay, that means I'm never coming to Thanksgiving with your parents, or I'm going to be a jerk and not talk to your father.

It's okay to have all these feelings and sit and eat the turkey.

Yeah, a lot of, I feel like a lot of men feel caught in between their mom and their wife if they're in a

heterosexual relationship.

Like, there's this conflict of, oh my gosh, I've got to choose between my mom and my wife, yeah, or my girlfriend, or whatever, whatever it may be.

Which is true, which is true.

It's true.

You have to make a transition when you get involved with a significant other.

You're making a transition.

I mean, I love the fact that you brought up the idea of loyalties, which is so powerful for all of us, loyalties to family, loyalties to ideas.

There is an element of making a transition from belonging to one group to belonging to a new family or new group.

And that is hard.

It's hard for the person and it's hard for the mother and it's hard for everyone.

Let's talk about that because I think culturally and different cultures have different expectations too.

So for example, in the Indian culture,

yeah, it's generally seen that the woman becomes a part of the man's family.

Now, that's a very traditional idea.

I was very fortunate to grow up in a home that was far more broad-minded than that.

And we don't, I don't subscribe to that.

What generation are you?

I'm like first generation in England.

First generation.

Yeah, in England, yeah, first generation in England.

I definitely don't subscribe to that idea.

To me, it's dehumanizing of the individual who kind of becomes like, oh, you were...

You're like an object.

Yeah, you're like an object that's now been placed over.

Now, do I believe that we're a part of each other's families?

Of course.

But I think for me, it was very clear that we were now building something together.

And that became the priority.

And the buildings that we both came from were homes that we could always visit and be a part of.

But we had to be very careful in curating the home.

And I explain this the way I like couples to think about it, because I know a lot of people who, when I say this to them, they get robbed the wrong way because they're like, what about culture?

What about tradition?

What about my family values?

Going back to loyalty.

And I like people to think about it like designing a home.

And we were talking about that earlier.

So you grew up in a certain home and your partner grew up in a certain home.

And I'm guessing when you move into a home or you rent an apartment or whatever it is that you both decide to do together, you design it.

to your tastes together.

It would be very rare for you to say, I want this to look exactly like my mom's home.

And it'd be very rare for that person to say, I want this to look exactly like my dad's home.

Chances are you're both going to come together and maybe one of the partners takes the lead because the other person doesn't have much interest or talent or skill and you end up creating this space.

But the point was you knew you were creating something together.

And so I like to think about it like that, where it's like, okay, well, we're designing something together.

And that doesn't mean we don't take influence and inspiration from the homes we came from.

But we're not trying to mirror those homes perfectly, no matter how amazing they were.

How do we open up our minds to that?

Because I think so many people just go, well, no, this is how it's done and this is how it's meant to be.

People come into relationships probably with your idea that they're going to create something together and that's their kind of conscious mind but then as the relationship starts to kind of take shape all sorts of unconscious loyalties

creep in and then a person might believe that they're creating this new home

but they suddenly feel like to use it metaphorically, but the foyer has to look a certain way and they don't even know why,

but it's coming from their family of origin.

A certain kind of...

It makes me think also of

queer couples that were raised by straight parents.

They have to really rebrand everything and recreate.

They can't rely on the old model, but they don't have another model to rely on yet.

So it creates like all these confusions, like, wait, are we trying to build kind of a straight-like relationship or are we creating something totally new?

And it's hard to create new.

I mean it's there's something that's easy when you rely on like an old model that was handed down to you and you don't have to like reinvent things and you don't have to think and wonder what's right, what's wrong.

You're just kind of repeating something that was done.

Yeah.

It comes up again around questions of raising children.

That's like then it starts all over again.

Like what's the right way to raise children and, you know, I don't know, sleep training or

is it just.

yeah, and then both your parents have ideas on how you should raise the kids too, and now you're fighting about what your parents think is the right way to raise kids.

Yeah, you're like, well, my mom raised me and she did a great job, and then you're like, well, my mom raised me and she did a great job, right?

And now it's like, my mom's better than your mom.

But that's that is what people are, those are the conversations people are having.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, that's what you're hearing too.

Yes, I'm hearing that a lot.

When people have the experience of letting go of the right, wrong, either, or

when they work through problems in a different way, it does get internalized and people get the hang of it and the good feeling of, oh my God, it's not, my ego doesn't have to be at stake with every discussion, or right-wrong is not the only way to think about things.

There are like so vast other ways to think about difference.

And when you get into the groove of that, the world opens up.

Yeah.

I think we need to give people a vocabulary for that.

Yeah.

And it's really hard when we've lived in a very logical, rational world.

Yeah.

Where like you learned math and there was something, there was a right answer.

Right.

And there was a wrong answer.

Right.

Although even in math, it's not true.

There's many ways to get to a solution.

Yeah.

But the way we were taught in school,

there was always a right and wrong answer.

So we don't really have the ability.

And I keep coming to art as a way of talking about it.

It's like art just doesn't have a lot of right and wrong.

Yeah.

It's just taste.

Yeah.

And taste can, taste is not good or bad.

It's just taste.

It's just like you could put a color that doesn't make sense next to another color and it could work and it could not work, but you're not looking at it in a binary way.

You have a reason for why it's placed there.

Yeah.

And I think we've

in

trying to get to right and wrong, we've lost our reasoning power.

Yeah.

Of like, why am I doing this?

Why are we doing this?

How are we behaving?

Yeah.

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How quickly do you know when you meet someone whether they're going to make it or not?

A couple?

Yeah.

You know, I don't make quick judgments.

I really refrain from that because I think humans, to me, I mean, and I've been working as a psychologist and analyst for many years, but humans to me remain, in principle, remain a certain kind of mystery.

There's something about humans that is like ever surprising to me.

And when a couple walks in,

they might look like they have like the most intense kind of hair-raising problems.

My general approach is: I want the mystery of why they're together and what they're trying to have with each other

reveal itself, and I want to line up with that part of them.

So I

really try try not to rush to any kind of judgment, oh, these guys are never going to make it.

I mean, there are certain things that, let's say, bother me with couples.

I mean, when they're very committed to a certain

stance of,

let's say, contempt or put-downs or if you want, you can call it abuse, although abuse is a complicated word nowadays.

But there's a certain kind of

pleasure in sadism that some couples develop.

They get hooked on a certain kind of sadomasochistic dynamic that

I'm not into.

And if I can't convince a couple, most couples want to get out of that.

They don't enjoy it.

I'm not talking about kink.

I'm talking about like a pernicious kind of mutually destructive way of engaging.

And if I can't convince a couple to move out of that mode, if there's something that is too tempting for them,

then either I think you guys should just break up and stop torturing each other, or I'm just not the right person for you.

I don't want to be in the presence of that.

But mostly people are not into that.

They might get stuck in that kind of pattern and then they look for me to help them.

But most people want to get out of that and they go for the honey.

You know, they go for the good if you just help them figure out how.

If a couple's stuck in the blame game,

like, look, this is all your fault.

And then the other person's like, well, I've been trying my best, you know, but 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 commonplace?

Right.

It's big.

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 dishes sit there for another two 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, blah, 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.

Yeah, I remember doing that for myself and realizing I thought I'd been tolerant of my partner and then realized my wife's actually been so tolerant of me.

Like you have that kind of

one eighty degree view where you just go, oh, wait a minute, I thought I was the one like doing everything.

Yeah.

But that's because I never kept score on her scorecard.

Yeah.

Right.

It was very easy for you to always look at things through your lens.

Totally.

You can always count the amount of overtime hours you did.

Yes.

It's the same at work.

You can always count the amount of effort you've put in, but you never see anyone else's effort.

You never see.

And we also miss the, like when our partner lets us off with bad behavior or a bad mood, you don't take note of that.

No.

But then when your partner, when you

react to your partner's bad mood or whatever, you're like, oh my God, look, I held back and

why aren't you doing that for me?

Yeah, why aren't you doing that for me?

But when

you're describing this change in you,

the thing that is interesting to me, and I often try to bring couples' attention to that, is I would assume that when you had that change, it actually felt really good.

Oh, for sure.

Right?

People are so afraid that they're going to lose something, but they gain something.

When they go through that change, that's what I was talking about earlier.

Like the world opens and

good feelings come in.

Like, oh, we're both in it together.

We're not like, oh, she's bad.

I'm good.

And like, she's to blame.

And it's suddenly like, oh, we're both human together.

We're both flawed.

We're both awesome.

Yeah.

What happens when objectively someone is being genuinely taken advantage of?

So it's like they're doing all the chores, they're contributing 50% financially,

their feelings are not heard or seen, they're never validated.

The person does actually have an expectation that you're meant to do all this, this is who you are, this is your role in life.

How does someone think through that when they still feel the person's a good person?

First of all, I have to say it's more rare than you'd think.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

it sometimes looks like that.

Like one person could be like, you know, like you're saying, doing all the work, and the other person is like mooching off them.

But when you look at the relationship, often what you find is that they're contributing in some other very subtle way.

It could be not something you can really put your finger on, but they're like the,

let's say, they're loyal to the

couplehood.

They're holding like the, the, the, the,

whatever that thing of the boat is called, the keel of the boat.

They're like the most romantic and holding on to the deepest idea of what the couple is despite all the fighting.

Or they might be contributing in ways that are

hard to account for and and it's important to to unearth that

and

give each person a sense of what their contribution really is.

Some of the work that I have to do with couples is

make people aware and accountable for where they are being selfish.

Because we all have an inclination to, as you said earlier, to only see our own work and only see our own point of view.

And

we're selfish and we're not even selfish.

We're self-centered.

We've got like, you know, the our perceptive field and we don't really see the other.

And working through that and

getting to a more humble place where you understand that you've been more selfish and that in certain ways you are exploiting your partner, it's an important piece of the work.

I have to go about it.

It's hard for all of us to acknowledge that.

So I have to go about it gingerly and sensitively with people and give a lot of reinforcement for being willing to take on that.

less pretty part of ourselves.

But ultimately, like you were saying earlier,

it's a a gratifying process.

That's why

it sounds almost like Pollyannish or corny, especially nowadays.

But I do believe in the goodness of people.

We ultimately want what's good for our partner.

Yeah, it's just that

we want what's good for our partner, but

maybe we don't know what's good for them.

Yeah.

Right.

And we often think we know what's good for our partner or right for our partner.

And that's sometimes our greatest mistake.

Yeah.

Because we're not really listening to them or

taking in from them what they're saying

and feeling.

We're self-centered.

We're narcissistic in many ways.

There's a way in which our worldview is limited by being, you know, especially the way we're raised.

I actually wonder what you'd think about this, because I think it's very different in Western versus other cultures, but we're raised with such a focus on the self.

I mean, there's a certain kind of narcissism built into our culture that makes it harder for us to be in

deep relationships.

Do you have thoughts on this?

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

I feel that to me, relationships have to be about growth and service.

And I think we think that they're about pleasure and ease.

Yeah, and self.

And self.

And that's what I mean by pleasure.

Pleasure is always, the self is always linked to pleasure generally and ease and comfort.

And it's funny because growth and service are the exact opposite.

So growth is the opposite of ease and comfort and service is the opposite of self-centeredness.

I've thought about it so often.

I've grown so much more.

And what I mean grown, I mean like challenged to grow.

by being in a relationship with my wife in a healthy way.

Yeah.

Then I have just had fun.

So it's like, we have lots of fun, things are great, but I've become a better human because of this relationship

on so many levels.

I've become more self-aware.

I've become less egotistical.

I've become more conscious of my flaws.

And it's happened all in a less judgmental way.

And I think that's the part that I think people get wrong is that we say this is the person that we want to love forever, but they end up becoming the person we judge forever.

And they become the person that we criticize forever.

And they become the person that we complain about forever.

And the person you said you wanted to love forever becomes the person who actually gets the least loving part of you.

And so when I say growth and service, I don't mean subservience when I say service.

And I don't mean judgment when I say growth.

Because I think a lot of people think, oh, well, if I'm going to point out all my partner's flaws so that they can grow and I look, I'm helping them.

And I'm like, well, no, that doesn't, you know, Rally's never done that to me.

And I think that's one of the reasons why we have a healthy healthy relationship because we both don't do that we both feel like we're guiding and coaching each other on things we both opt in and say we want to work on what would you say if you had to characterize each of your basic stances towards each other what how would you describe it oh that's interesting i i don't know if i've even have the vocabulary for that it's a great question um i would say i am completely in awe of my wife.

I love her.

I find her to be the most adorable, wonderful human being.

I could look at a, you know, a video or a picture of her.

And I just, it's, we've been together for 11 years, and I'll just feel this like overarching feeling of love towards her.

And that's her stance.

I would have to ask her for this question, I guess.

You never perceive it.

I think, I think, if she was answering this in a question to you, or when I wasn't in the room,

I think she'd say that she has a deep sense of respect.

And

I don't want want to use the word adoration out of context, but like there's a,

if, if she's sharing how she feels with me in private or in a, in a special moment, or

through a friend who said something to me,

it would be that I think she just, she trusts me deeply.

She has a very positive feeling towards me as a human, let alone just as a partner.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

And I don't, yeah.

And, you know, sometimes I have to get that out of her.

But you know, it's awesome.

But that, but that's what you're describing, sort of, what you're it's like the space that you're creating for each other, right, to live in that kind of basic stance.

Like when you were asking earlier, like, what are couples that will not make it?

I mean, that's that's what you want.

You want the couple to create that kind of space between them to live in.

You're creating the world in which you're living.

How do you encourage them to do that when they're saying to you, you know what,

yeah, yeah when i look at my partner he's like i know he's a good guy at heart

i know i know he's i know he means well but he just you know all he does is watch football all weekend right and like he always forgets my birthday and you know it's just like it's always about like spending time with his family right and like

you know i don't even think he even he never wants to talk about his feelings like you know if that's what you're hearing right it's very different i do hear i do hear exactly how do you encourage them to heal that Well, hopefully, you know, to have that kind of stance that you described so beautifully, like that you each kind of provide for each other.

First of all, you have to have that capacity inside you, right?

Meaning it speaks to some way that you come into the relationship with a capacity to love.

right like a capacity to experience those kind of feelings towards another person

and then

which is great and i believe

most of us have that.

I mean, most of us have enough good inside us that we have that.

It's just now how do you create the conditions where that is the thing that can come out?

And couples come into treatment basically.

I often joke about the fact that

couples come in basically saying, doctor, can you change my partner?

That's like they won't say it, but that's really why couples come into my office.

Can you please change my partner?

Everything will be okay if you just change her.

But when you

get people less invested in what we were saying earlier, like the blame, blame, blame, and he did this, she did that,

and get them

back into this feeling of awe

about another person, this feeling of like, but actually look at them.

They're just so wonderful in some elemental way, in some way that I know, I know their goodness.

Remember that feeling, like approach them from that place.

You're creating the conditions for that person to thrive, right?

When your wife looks at you with adoration, that's when your best self will come out.

When your wife looks at you like, oh, you've fed up again,

you're just like, I don't care anymore.

I'm going to go play video games.

Like, who needs that?

Right?

So

by the way you're you're looking at your partner you're inviting certain parts of themselves out and i remind people of that we respond to each other we respond to the gaze to the the music we're sending each other and it it invites different parts of us out what about when someone feels I've given them too many chances, I've given them that lens for too long

and they're just not shifting, but they've not done anything terrible where I need to leave them, but they're also not making any progress on this path.

And I kept looking at them with a loving lens, with a compassionate lens, but I just keep running out of patience.

In that case, I would need to hear from the partner what's going on.

I mean, some people, I mean, is the partner depressed?

I don't know.

What's going on there?

Like, if really a lot

is being offered and the partner can't pick up on those nutrients, what's going on?

Are they, maybe they're going through something?

Maybe they're maybe there's something completely different going on on their end, some kind of grudge or something that they haven't had a chance to really articulate.

I mean, that would be interesting for me if that happens.

That's not the typical thing that happens between people.

Interesting.

I mean, typically, if you put good out, good will come back.

And I like that idea of...

When you look at your partner in a certain way,

it's what they feel and it's what you feel.

And I think it goes back to that human need we all have as wanting someone to believe in us.

Yeah.

There's such a feeling, like I believe everyone has that at the core.

Of course.

Like everyone, but there's very few people who believe in you or at least you make you feel that way.

Yeah.

It starts obviously, you know, you know, I'm a psychoanalyst, so I'm eventually going to go back to childhood, but it starts with the way whoever raised you looked at you.

Like what was the,

you know, it doesn't have to be the mother, but what was the look in your mother's eye when she saw you?

Did the mother's eyes ultimately sparkle and like, oh, my baby?

Or did the mother always say, ugh, you're always disappointing?

Right?

There's like this basic way in which we're invited into the world or not

that stays with us.

And

that's a powerful kind of early,

early platform from which we operate.

What's the first hard question you should ask yourself in a relationship?

I would say, um,

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.

Yeah.

And can I hold space

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, because I think sometimes we feel guilty.

I 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 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.

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'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.

That is what people want.

That's not going to work.

I literally feel like we find someone that we find attractive 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.

Because you'll 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 is important, right?

I would probably frame it differently.

Please, I would say

the person that you 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.

But you don't know that.

You don't know that.

You're 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.

Because 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 usually you're working through something.

There was a couple on the show that were a great example of that,

where

the woman started off with

really intense complaints about her husband that he's not ambitious.

And

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 often something else that creates this kind of, you got to change for me.

Yeah.

Yeah, because it reminds us of something from.

It reminds us of something that we haven't resolved or that your parents haven't resolved or

it could be like,

I don't know if we want to get into that, but it could be like something like politically that wasn't resolved.

I'll just say in general, that couldn't resolve a certain issue of passports between them

that had to do with one of them being Palestinian and like not having like statehood and would fight with their partner about passports, but it had nothing to do with the partner.

It didn't even have to do with their own families.

It had to do with Palestinian identity.

All sorts of things make their way into

what seems like an issue between the partners that come from really other places.

So

when people start blaming their partner for stuff, for me, it's like a riddle.

Yeah.

What is this really about?

And those are the kind of questions that if we reflect on it ourselves too,

it can help us so much.

I mean, are you do you find that are women more prone to be the fixes?

First of all, I think things are changing as far as gender, so it's a little hard to make

real statements about like women and men.

But if I had to kind of say something general, I'd say women are

raised to be more kind of tuned into

the

ins and out of a relationship and kind of take care of the relationship in a certain way in terms of like

talking more, bringing feelings to the table.

And men are more tuned into like the frame around the relationship and a certain kind of loyalty over time.

They add a certain rudder to the relationship.

So it's different ways of tending to the relationship.

But even that, it changes a lot.

And of course, it then looks very different in queer relationships.

So

but that's kind of my

crude generalization about women and men.

How have you helped men who struggle to open up about their emotions, open up?

Because I think sometimes there's a lot of pressure for a man to show up emotionally.

Right.

But he may never have had that training or that vocabulary or that safe space his whole life.

Well, he probably has anti-training, right?

Men are, I mean, again, it's different nowadays, but typically men are raised to

disavow their feelings, focus on

power, protection.

I mean, important functions, not to minimize that, there's a lot of value in those, but they're raised to turn away from their feelings.

And

what I do in my work with men is

I,

in a way, teach them to pay attention to

small hints about their emotional world.

And they're always there, a stomachache, a tightness in the chest,

a habit that is not good for them.

And to follow those beginning hints and clues and try to get curious about what else can they tell me about their emotions.

And when they start getting in touch with feelings, it's usually it's very gratifying.

It's good to get in touch with your feelings.

It feels good.

You feel more grounded.

Your world gets richer and your relationships get better.

So it's really starting from the little clues and developing curiosity and then kind of developing a menu, like a vocabulary for all these little things that happen in you.

Like from having like three words for feelings,

like I'm angry, I'm bored, I'm happy.

You know, you can start expanding to 12 words and then eventually to like 70 words.

And then, you know,

it gets interesting.

Yeah.

And I feel like people have to be patient.

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And back to our episode.

That's what I found in relationships the most, that

a lot of us are waiting for everything to change at the next therapy session yeah the next 24 hours yeah the next argument or we just learned that in therapy it should be solved now right and i'm like you realize they've been practicing that habit for like 29 years

generations yeah yeah and generations even more than 29 years and so i just feel like we've lost our ability to be patient because

There's so much choice.

Yeah.

And there's a feeling that, well, someone must be able to do all these things.

Yeah.

What do we do when we think that way?

I'm a big advocate for, you know, slowness.

I mean, psychoanalysis is a slow process.

We spend like several times a week and over years like slowly attending to things.

I think when people are

offered the experience of going through things slowly, they suddenly remember, oh, this is actually good for me.

I mean, rather than scrolling through like a million quick videos or snippets of things or like just the headlines of news to sink into something is actually gratifying,

right?

It feels good.

You just have to be guided.

You have to offer people a frame, like the analytic frame.

Like people sit in my office, a couple sits for an hour without looking at their phones, and we're slowly working through things, and then it feels good, and things really happen.

So it's just having the experience.

Yeah.

Let's, I want to focus on a different life cycle part of relationships.

When people are starting to date, are there things that they can look for that show the sign of someone being a strong partner for them or a weak partner?

You know, that so much happens early on when we just meet people.

that is unconscious.

So much is unconscious.

Like years later, you'll be able to analyze why you really like this person or what went wrong.

So it's hard to make people

really fully aware of what's moving them.

I would say

listen to your gut.

Your gut is telling you important things, and it might be telling you important things about yourself, about your own history.

It might be telling you to keep repeating the same mistakes, or it might be telling you something really worth listening to to about the other person that is good, don't be afraid.

So, listen to your gut.

I would also say, listen to what the other person is telling you.

People often disclose a lot about themselves right at the beginning, and we often don't listen.

I know that from when patients come into my practice and I'm having first sessions with people, often people tell me everything right at the beginning,

even in the way they're like

late to a session and the way they explain it, they might be telling me a lot about their whole life history, just in the very beginning.

So listen, don't ignore information that's right in front of you.

Like

Hillary was actually telling me that a friend of hers

dated someone who

I think on their first date told her,

I have a suitcase of unpaid bills under my bed

and she thought it's funny

and ignored that of course only later later later to find out i mean this person was like a mess it sounded funny on the first it sounded funny but they're telling you real information so listen listen to what people are telling you

listen is generally a good a good piece of advice yeah if someone tells you that they have a bad relationship with their parents

are there certain things to expect or is that too general?

First of all, that's an interesting piece of information, talking about listening.

I would immediately get curious, like what is the person telling me?

Is the person telling me something about

early trauma?

And

I'd want to know what happened and how did this person what does it mean to not have a good relationship with a parent after trauma?

So, I'd want to know what happened,

and is the person you're getting to know,

are they,

did something bad happen to them with their family of origin, and

they have developed a certain kind of wisdom where they know how to separate themselves from

earlier traumatic experiences or not good experiences, and they've kind of formed their own personhood in a way that you can trust

or

is this I mean

to the other end of things is someone in a way

stuck in something that they kind of have not found a way to work their way out of and they're going to be forever stuck in a certain old pattern that

they really need to be doing the work to move out of.

So, you know, I mean, I'm giving two extremes.

Like, one is I've had like something bad happen to me, or this was not good, and

I've just worked my way out of it, and I'm separate from this family of origin.

Or on the other extreme, is, yeah, I hold a grudge, and I'm forever begrudging these parents.

And really, I'm going to be repeating that in this relationship, too, because

this is my life story, grudge.

It's so hard because it it seems like long-term relationships, which is what we all want,

require three types of healing.

Like that person needs to heal, you need to heal, and then you need to heal together.

Right.

And you need to make space for them to heal.

They need to make space for you to heal.

You need to make space for yourself to heal.

And then there's so much healing required.

Yeah.

And it requires so much.

patience, compassion, empathy, like almost endless to some degree.

Again, I'm not talking about abusive or, you know,

violent relationships.

We're talking about a relationship that's not abusive or violent.

There's like endless amounts because,

you know, it's like things were great and then you had a child and then the child had challenges and then you went through that together.

And I've had so many friends this year go through a miscarriage and like that created new things in their relationship that they didn't have before because they both dealt with grief differently.

Yeah.

Samsara,

Life is difficult.

I mean life's amazing, but life is full of,

I mean, you know, the Americans think that

life is about pleasure and happiness.

I mean, life is a challenge.

I mean,

death is embedded in life.

I mean, life is full of difficulties.

There's always loss.

There's always a challenge.

It's the stuff of life.

And I welcome that.

That's what life is about.

about.

How do you know your relationship is strong enough?

How do you prepare?

Not that you can ever prepare for anything like that, but 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.

I agree, but I feel like that's been our only metric

of how we perceive.

If we say someone has a great marriage, 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, 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.

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 what we said earlier that kind of stance

when you spend time with a couple when you spend time with a couple you have they 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

there is space for them to thrive.

So

it's sort of the music of a relationship.

Is it a music of like a mutual

respect, adoration, or is it 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

changing

together, meaning is there room for each of them to change at their own speed and together as a couple?

Do they go through changes and evolutions?

That's a really good quality of the relationship, that it's

you know, that it doesn't break under pressure, but it changes under pressure.

That's a very strong quality.

I mean, couples that don't argue scare me.

I don't know

what happens there.

Do they just not talk?

Or do they not reveal ways in which they're different?

That's scary.

Tell me more on that.

I like that.

Like, 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.

And that's where its life is.

but can i ask you what would you say i have the markers of like a good relationship i really appreciate appreciate your answer i think it's um

it's it's it's unique i've i've not heard those things before and i appreciate that a lot

i think one where both people don't expect the other person to value what they value but they allow the other person to have their values and they have their own

and both people respect each other's values but they don't want the other person to believe as strongly about theirs as they do the others yeah because I just think that

that's pretty difficult if you're honest yeah it's easy if you're living at a surface level and a superficial level to be like oh we both value family and it's like well

you don't really like maybe it's second on your list but first on your list is your career let's just be honest there's nothing wrong with that but let's be honest about it And hey, for family, it's not really family, it's specifically your kids.

It's not the whole family.

So let's really be, let's get really honest about that.

And then we may realize we have different values, but that doesn't break our relationship because I respect and we know where we stand.

So I think that's a sign of a healthy relationship when we can be really, that's what I think honesty is.

I don't think honesty is, I did this, what did you do?

Yeah.

That's a part of honesty.

But the real honesty is like

the depth of your, what you believe in.

Yeah.

What I really, can I really tell you what I believe in?

Yeah.

and you're okay with it yeah and of course when that changes it can be hard yeah and i think that's a sign of a good relationship is how we deal with new information and change

and that doesn't mean you have to stay together if the information is not what you want to hear or yeah isn't right for you but i think a strong and healthy relationship is where

you are okay with most changes and you're able to flow rather than saying well you're not the same person you you were i thought you were this

And they're like, yeah, we've been together for 10 years.

And so I think a healthy relationship is one that allows for different iterations of each other

and what that comes with.

And rather than trying to hold on to the person you had on your wedding day,

you're open to the idea that they're actually going to be different every day and every decade.

I would say a healthy relationship is one where you don't depend on the other person for everything.

Yeah.

When you have other people in your life, you have friends, your family, your have parents, you have other people you can turn to, as well as turning to your partner.

But it isn't an over-dependence on them, or it isn't the opposite, which is an over-reliance on everyone else and no dependence on them.

When it comes to my relationship, I talk to my partner.

When it comes to other stuff, I have other people to talk about it with.

Like that balance of, if we're talking about issues in the relationship, I don't need to talk to someone else.

I need to talk to my partner about it.

They're the person I need to go to.

But if I have issues with something that came up today and actually I love venting with my mom or my brother or whatever, then that's who I'm going to turn to.

So that's what comes to mind at least.

And can I go back and ask you, I'm just curious what you think about like what for you is like a sign of a bad relationship?

I want to ask you too.

I have a really interesting

perspective on love and relationships and it comes from my mum like i believe my mum made me believe that i was lovable and that i feel that in my core and so giving love for me feels very easy because i feel like i was showered in it since i was a kid and when i say love i mean love i don't mean things i don't mean stuff i don't mean

i mean just i think my mum loves me and i've always felt that my mum's love was a shield to early trauma that i did experience but didn't penetrate the shield And so I feel very lucky.

So I feel like I could love the whole world and never run out.

And it comes from my mum.

My mom gets the credit for that.

And what you were saying when you were like, does that mom have that look in her eyes?

Yeah, I was like, my mom has that.

I could totally resonate.

I was like, yeah, that's my mom.

So that's why you couldn't.

Yeah, so I have an unlimited, I feel an unlimited.

And of course, I feel very connected to God.

I feel connected to source.

So I feel a very unlimited sense of love.

It shows up in different ways.

Sometimes setting love is setting boundaries and overgiving or compassion fatigue and

all those things have to be taken into account.

But I think when you ask me what's the sign of a

unhealthy relationship or a bad relationship,

I think it's when I feel that we're both only looking

at the other person's mistakes.

We're not looking at our own.

And we're looking for all accountability to be taken by the other person

and not ours.

And we're not willing to, at certain times,

be potentially the savior of the relationship when we're thinking, well, they should be doing it too.

And I think a healthy relationship is recognizing some days you're going to carry me and some days I'm going to carry you.

And yes, it may have looked like I carried you for the last two years.

but you may carry me for the next two.

And I don't want to live in a world where we're counting every day, whether everything is 50 50 yeah because i don't think it works that way like my wife was there were you know when we first got married and we moved to new york and she was away from her family and she never once complained to me she missed her family a lot and she told me she missed them and where's her family in london yeah

and She missed her family a lot, but she didn't complain to me.

She didn't nag me.

She didn't tell me like it was all my fault that she was away from her family.

And so I know she tolerated a lot.

And at the same time, all I wanted was for her to be with her family because I knew how much that meant to her.

And I would say that in those early years, she was so patient and so tolerant with the fact that we'd moved here for my work and my mission and my purpose.

And I was living my dream.

But a part of my dream is also seeing her happy.

So my dream wasn't complete either.

Right.

But I think the point is she carried me those years because she didn't feel like a weight.

She could have, but she chose not to,

even though she was honest about how she felt, but it wasn't like it was my fault.

It didn't feel projected onto me.

And then she's been through such an evolution in the last couple of years where her role in our life has changed, her career has taken off, her purpose has blossomed, so much has happened.

And I feel I've been there for her while she's been finding herself and discovering herself.

And I've been open to that.

And I'm like, but if she was like, looking at it in the early days and it's like, I moved for you.

I did all this for you.

What are you doing for me?

You're just living your dream.

Yeah.

If she said that to me, I don't know if we would have survived.

Right.

And then now, when she needed a partner to give her space to blossom and grow, if she would have left me before for all those reasons or whatever, then she may not have found a person who is willing to.

And I wasn't doing it because she did it for me.

I was doing it because I love her.

And I think that's what it is.

You're motivated from a place of, it's not like I'm counting.

I'm just doing this because I love you.

I'm not doing this because.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, does that make sense?

I don't know.

Sorry, I took a windy row ticket.

No, no, no, no.

It also ties to a few of the things we've been talking about.

It sort of

even ties to like the question of like, if someone says, I'm estranged from my family of origin, like again, is it like a stance of like

they didn't do enough for me, grudge, grudge, grudge?

Or is it a stance of I'm taking responsibility for myself?

Yeah, and I think it all comes down to the old wisdom of just what can I do?

What can I control?

What can can I focus on?

It's not about what I can't control and what I don't think about.

Or the blame game.

Or the blame game.

I was going to ask you about some more of those things, actually.

Like, what are your thoughts on, how often do you hear the word gaslighting in the office?

Is it common?

Yeah, there are a bunch of words that I hear a lot now in the office that I think come from

TikTok.

Yeah, yeah.

Gaslighting,

triggers, trauma,

Love bombing.

Love bombing.

Yeah, recently there was a lot of love bombing.

What are your reactions to this word?

So when I say the word love bombing,

what are your instant thoughts?

My instant thoughts are, first of all, I'm old

because I came in with a different vocabulary.

And

I typically ask people to,

or there's another one, activated.

I'm activated.

People are using that a lot.

Triggered and activated.

I typically ask people to,

I like play dumb and I say, tell me what you mean.

I don't know what you mean.

Because usually the way people use these words is

they have a feeling about something, but they don't exactly know what that something is.

So they grab a word, I guess, from TikTok that kind of supposedly captures it, and then they're done thinking.

They stop investigating themselves, or they stop really, they're just like, aha, I found the culprit.

Gaslighting.

That's what's happening to me.

I don't have to think about it anymore.

Someone is bad.

You know, it's usually a lot of.

I love that.

I agree with you.

Yeah.

It's usually a lot more complicated than I found the word and someone is bad.

Yeah, it's almost a relief we feel when we find the word.

Yeah.

But actually,

he's a narcissist.

Yeah, whatever.

He's gaslighting me.

So I feel like the world has everyone feels like they've dated a narcissist

how accurate are they a hundred percent accurate because we all have parts of ourselves that are narcissistically oriented meaning they're to protect our sense of self some people move more to the extreme and they're really like deeply wounded and and have to spend a lot of energy protecting themselves and working around their ego but most of us in certain situations were

provoked to behave in more narcissistic ways.

And when we're offered other conditions, we can be more open and interested in the world.

So it's usually the way it's used in pop language.

It's usually just like a word that covers up a whole other world of things.

I think when people talk about I've dated a narcissist, they're like,

that person didn't give me enough attention.

And what's that about that?

There could be so much there.

Like, what, what went on between the two of you?

Why?

What happened?

Where were you in that?

It doesn't tell you much.

Yeah.

I'm so happy to hear that because I do think that the word is a relief.

It's not that it's wrong.

It's just that don't stop unpacking it there.

Yeah.

So those words are really helpful for you to categorize, summarize your experience,

but don't feel that that's the end of the investigation.

Like there's so much more.

Exactly.

And you're actually doing yourself a disservice.

Yeah.

And the moment you're thinking about, I found a word that finds all the problem outside of me, you're deluding yourself.

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Thanks for taking a moment for that.

Now back to the discussion.

When you find couples come in with financial issues,

Is it really about money?

Money is a big issue for people.

Money is a big issue for people.

You know, the question of money, one of the questions that people, that couples deal with when they're fighting or debating about money is

the deep question of

mine versus ours.

What's mine and what are we sharing?

And the most concrete version of it is money, but it's everything.

It's time,

it's attention, it's airtime, it's sex, it's

so much is like mine versus ours.

But money is like, especially in our culture, money is like the most concrete way to talk about it and to fight about it.

Like if you're making more money than your spouse or than your partner, who pays for dinner?

Like

what's the vibe between the two of you?

Is it shared money or is it, no, we're still going Dutch, right?

Fights about money are about the concreteness of money, but they're also about

where do I begin and end, and what's us together.

And then there's a whole other thing with money, which is

money is also something to do with our relationship with reality.

Right?

You, I mean, back to the idea of someone hiding a suitcase with bills, unpaid bills under the bed.

Like, how realistic is your relationship with reality, with what you have, with what you're making?

Like, when people talk about money, they're talking about reality in certain ways.

I usually ask people, how do you think money should play out between the two of you?

If you're making more money than your partner, what is your ideology on this?

What do you really think should happen?

Does that give you more power?

Does that mean you should be making more of the decisions?

Does that mean your partner should be paying for less?

How do you think about it?

Each of you, just what's your basic ideology?

Which is hard for people to acknowledge, right?

They want to feel like, no, money doesn't matter, but it matters to everyone in some way or another.

They have an ideology.

So, are they willing to put it on the table to be honest with how they think about it?

And then, once you compare these ideologies, then we can have a discussion.

It's back to the idea of like the couple creating

their political

backdrop.

Like, what is the politics of this relationship?

Are you like socialist?

Are you capitalist?

Are you

what's your economic system?

What if we disagree?

What if we vote differently?

You probably will disagree.

On some level, you will.

Somewhere you will disagree, and then it's going to get interesting.

It's going to be like a Congress, like, right, debating what's the right way to do it.

But it's better to have that debate on the table rather than act it out in those, like,

what was that film?

There was that, oh my God, it's a film in which um the there's a shipwreck there's this couple that are sitting at the dinner table and they're looking at each other like who's gonna pull out the credit card oh i don't know

brilliant scene

everything about their relationship was in that scene i don't know with her kind of pretending she lost her card oh okay and him but reluctantly pulling out his credit card and then there was it was just like perfect i was thinking of a movie called fair play

i didn't see that Did you see that?

I heard about it.

I didn't see it.

I think you'd, I don't know if you'd enjoy it.

I don't know your taste in movies, but I think it's really interesting.

It's a story about where it's a movie made about a couple who are competing for the same job because they work at the same company.

Oh, but it's really dark.

And it really goes into that.

the psychology of competition, gender roles, the pay gap.

Yeah.

Everything comes to play.

Yeah.

And it shows how it affects them from the bedroom to the boardroom to everywhere else awesome it's really well done yeah it's really well done it just it just shows you what's going on inside of our heads that doesn't often come out

and

and and just how we all feel

and it's so interesting how society and all of this has such a play on how we feel about our role and who we are today we have so many more people to look at and view and see how their lives are going i had i had a friend who his girlfriend made more money money than him, and he did really well for himself, but she made more money than him.

But she expected him to pay for everything.

And she wanted him not only to pay for dinners and rent,

and she wanted him to buy her a car because she believed that

because he's the man.

That's how she should be treated.

And that was, you know, that was for her.

Imagine them having a conversation.

They ended up breaking up.

But what would their conversation sound like?

Literally this.

i deserve this i'm a queen i'm a princess i'm like this is how i should be treated like this you think she would she said something like she said stuff like this yeah yeah wow that's amazing yeah

that's amazing and you see a lot of this language on tick tock and things like that about what a high value man is what a high value woman is and a lot of the language and vocabulary out there what's what is it what is meant by a high value man i mean there's lots of different definitions but generally it's someone who has a good career, makes a lot of money, does well for themselves.

And, you know, that the obvious definition of it.

Well, it's not obvious.

Yeah, yeah, no.

But to me, it's not obvious.

Yeah.

But it's just interesting to hear how these societal ideas kind of, because then we're like, oh, but you're not with a high-value man, you know, and it's really interesting because

in my world, a high-value man would be someone who has good values.

Right.

The good values being like ethics.

Yeah, ethics.

Yeah, exactly.

Like character, moral character,

strength, and courage and bravery and

honesty.

And

that's what I would consider a high-value person forgetting a high-value man.

Yeah.

And it's interesting how all this language at play kind of cascades ideas quickly, like you said.

Yeah.

Because it's easier, rather than saying, I'm with a good man, it's easier to say, I'm with a high-value man.

But, you know, what does that mean?

Right.

Yeah, I was going to ask you, do more people want more intimacy or more sex?

I think it depends.

First of all,

it's a complicated thing to draw the line between intimacy and sex.

Oh, interesting.

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

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 the biology but um

but i think typically

there there are different focuses for men and women and then later in the relationship things change because i think later in the relationship the the

the line between sex and intimacy gets very blurry.

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 a lot about the experience of desire and being desired that is really kind of the

thing we all want.

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 desired.

I'm wanted, 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 of that I shouldn't honor my partner too much because it almost puts me in a weak place.

Like a zero-sum kind of?

Yeah, like 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 that's what everything is.

But yeah, people thrive in feeling wanted and appreciated.

Anything that makes people more stingy, I think is problematic.

I think stinginess withholding is like

destructive.

Give more, give, give, give, give freely.

Create a good environment around you.

Orna, thank you for your time and energy today.

You've been so gracious.

And I've genuinely loved talking to you.

I felt like I had so many new thoughts and ideas today just being in your presence.

And now I'm like, now I know what it feels like to be in the room with you.

And I'm like, sweet.

Honestly, I mean that.

Like, I just felt like everything was firing in my mind and I was connecting dots that I haven't before.

So thank you.

It was such a joy.

Me too, Jay.

It was wonderful questions.

And I love all the both the vignettes that you bring in that are immediately like, oh my God, the whole world is in this vignette.

And the questions you're asking, they're right at the core.

Thank you.

You're so kind.

Orna, 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 advice.

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 let live.

Yeah.

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.

Why is that bad advice?

Because that's paranoid.

It's like a

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 it, 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 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 sold on that idea.

That's everything.

Great.

We've been spending too much time trying to find this like perfect match,

perfect fit, who's like, it's just like, there isn't.

I think about that when my wife all holds it up, we are so different.

Yeah, we couldn't be more different.

Yeah.

Like in every way, in so many ways.

And

I love being alone.

She loves being surrounded by family.

Like,

I'm super driven, focused, ambitious.

She's fun, playful, doesn't take life seriously.

That's great, though.

Like, it's just, but it's so different.

I'm always on time.

I like order.

I like structure.

I like systems.

She believes in fairness.

Spontaneity.

Yeah, spontaneity.

And so that initially did create so many rifts and challenges like it was hard because it was like i was ready to go on time she's not yeah to me that's hard

that is hard big issue yeah i want systems in order i want to plan our weekend out or our vacation and she's like let's just go and see how it goes i'm like yeah that's like my worst nightmare is to like turn up somewhere and see how it goes like what if it's booked right what if the show's booked what if the yeah scuba diving's booked like whatever it is like what if it's all that's like my worst so So how do you do it now?

How do you do the lateness, not lateness?

I realized that a lot of the things I wanted to be on time for didn't matter.

Yeah.

There were things that were and things that didn't.

It was me holding myself to a standard that wasn't always necessary.

It comes back to her with the plates.

It was the same thing.

It was like, sometimes it is important to be on time.

Like today, it was important for me to be on time for you.

Sometimes it's not important for me to be on time because it's casual and it's friends and everyone's kind of turning up and you've got a window to turn up in.

But I still want to be there on time because that's just my training.

Because my mom always told me, if you're not early, you're late.

And so that comes from that training of just military discipline, which is what I live my life.

So I had to learn that for the late thing.

And then when it came on the

vacations, we planned, we both wanted one day on, one day off.

So if you go on vacation for seven days,

three or four of the days are planned and three or four of the days are spontaneous.

And we actually love that.

So, it worked out.

Whereas I used to do seven days planned, but that would exhaust me.

Yeah.

And so now I'm like, oh, this is actually a healthier solution.

So, yeah, taking from that.

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

I did feel like one

in the couple was just too.

My explanation is that he was just too traumatized and he kept

really

viciously abusing his wife in my presence.

And I really tried everything, and I believe 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

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.

So that was probably the worst.

And they didn't, they stayed together or they actually stayed together.

They did.

I mean, I think the work eventually did help them 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

why

would a family keep going w with that level of toxicity.

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 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

another difficult situation was

a couple that I cared about deeply and I really really understood them it was an abuse but they couldn't

they couldn't stop repeating a certain pattern that was

a direct

replay of each of their childhood traumas.

It wasn't abuse.

It was just mm issues around abandonment.

Uh and

that was very hard.

The common denominator is situations where I'm I'm doing my best and I can't affect change.

That's hard.

How do you deal with that?

I try hard.

I'm like

relentless.

I mean, I I will work with couples.

I will sweat.

I will put my heart into it.

I'll think about it later.

I'll read.

I'll talk to colleagues.

I try.

I'm like, if I take on a couple, I'm like in it.

But ultimately, you know,

stay in your own lane.

People are going to live their life.

I'll bring the horse to the water.

If they repeatedly won't drink, it's, I've got my life to live.

Yeah.

Fifth and final question: if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Ah,

okay.

Do no harm.

Do no harm.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Arna, thank you so much.

Thank you, Jay.

If you love this episode, you're going to love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get over your ex and find true love in your relationships.

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