EXPERTS ON EXPERT: John Gottman

[0] Hello.

[1] Welcome to Experts on Expert.

[2] My name is Dr. Dax Shepard.

[3] I'm joined by Dr. Padman, Dr. Monica Padman.

[4] I wouldn't call us doctors.

[5] Well, why not?

[6] Because I'm truthful.

[7] Well, you've played people in film and television.

[8] Didn't have your real name, right?

[9] What are you saying?

[10] I don't know, but I am here to tell you that more than any other person, I believe, I referenced the gentleman.

[11] that's on our podcast today.

[12] Yeah.

[13] I discovered him in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blank, and this is a man who's dedicated with his wife, Julie, to studying marriage and what makes it end, he can predict at a very scary high percentage rate.

[14] Yes.

[15] Who will get divorced after watching them talk for one hour?

[16] Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.

[17] I find that information very helpful because, look, he's pretty much listed the things you should avoid.

[18] His name is Dr. John Gottman and he and his wife, Julie Gottman.

[19] They are the, I don't know, I'll just say directors.

[20] That's not the right word, but founders of the Gottman Institute.

[21] They do a lot of work on relationships, both marital and familial child, parent, parent child.

[22] They have a new book called Eight Dates that we will talk about.

[23] But if you are in a relationship, think you may ever find yourself in a relationship, then this is incredibly helpful data to have.

[24] My voice went out on data to have.

[25] So did you even hear what I said?

[26] I said data to have.

[27] I think it was clear.

[28] Data.

[29] We have your data.

[30] Data.

[31] Data.

[32] Isn't data weird in that when it's plural, it's still data?

[33] Sure.

[34] I like words like that.

[35] You do, right?

[36] Can you think of any others?

[37] No. Oxen, that's an EN.

[38] No. Data.

[39] That's one.

[40] Oh, that's a good one.

[41] Oh, good.

[42] We thought of another one.

[43] Oh, good.

[44] We have two.

[45] Well, without any further ado, please enjoy Dr. John Gottman, Data.

[46] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[47] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[48] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[49] It's a great pleasure to have you here because I've been quoting you for a very long time and misquoting you saying you worked at a different university altogether.

[50] I've gotten virtually all of it wrong, but what I think is the important thing.

[51] And I became aware of you through Blink.

[52] Oh, right, right.

[53] Right, the Malcolm Gladwell book.

[54] And it just so happened that I started reading that book.

[55] Chris and I read it together, my wife, and we read it pretty soon into being a couple.

[56] And I found it to be such a revolutionary idea that you've targeted what destroys a marriage.

[57] through lots of research, longevity research.

[58] And I said, oh, my God, this gentleman has found out the things we need to avoid.

[59] Now, I've forgotten the other three, but the one we live by is no contempt.

[60] Yeah, that's a big one.

[61] People on here have heard me talk about you, again, with the wrong detail.

[62] But in fact, you work at University of Washington or you at least did.

[63] Yeah, I did.

[64] And is that where all the studies took place?

[65] At University of Washington and University of Illinois and at Berkeley.

[66] Okay.

[67] So Bob Levinson and I have been collaborating for 45 years.

[68] And you are, you were born in the Dominican Republic?

[69] Well, in World War II, Roosevelt convened 38 countries and asked them to take Jewish refugees.

[70] Turhillo was the only one who said he would.

[71] Oh, really?

[72] Yeah.

[73] And he did that because he had massacred a bunch of Haitians.

[74] and he was out of favor with Franklin.

[75] And so he wanted to get in his good graces.

[76] So he said he would take 100 ,000 Jews and only 750 made it.

[77] And you guys were Orthodox, yeah?

[78] My father was Orthodox, yeah.

[79] So was it challenging to maintain being kosher on that island that probably didn't have a lot of...

[80] No, my father was a kosher butcher.

[81] Oh, he was?

[82] He was the kosher butcher, the rabbi.

[83] He ran the newspaper, and he ran the newspaper, the theater.

[84] No kidding.

[85] So an industrious person.

[86] And he raised chickens.

[87] Oh, wow.

[88] And how old were you when you left there?

[89] Three and a half.

[90] Okay.

[91] And you moved to Brooklyn or New York?

[92] Right.

[93] What brought you guys there?

[94] Well, he started off wanting to be in Miami.

[95] And he got on a bus.

[96] He didn't know about, you know, all the laws, segregation laws.

[97] And he got on the bus and sat in the back with the black people and caused, you know, a major disturbance.

[98] And couldn't understand, you know, what the problem was.

[99] Yeah.

[100] And when he found out that, you know, black people had sit in the back and white people in the front, he said, he couldn't live there.

[101] So under the Jim Crow laws.

[102] That's right.

[103] So he had a cousin in Brooklyn, so that's where we went.

[104] So that's what you are.

[105] You're a New Yorker, yeah.

[106] Would you consider yourself that?

[107] Yeah, pretty close, yeah.

[108] Yeah, and where did you go to school, to college?

[109] I went to Fairleigh Dickens City University in New Jersey.

[110] Okay, and did you go right into psychology?

[111] No, I was in math.

[112] Oh, you were?

[113] Yeah, I was a math and physics major.

[114] And then I went to MIT on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to get a PhD in math.

[115] And my roommate, you get assigned a roommate randomly, was studying psychology.

[116] And I found his books a lot more interesting than my book.

[117] books.

[118] Yeah.

[119] So I switch feels at that point.

[120] I applaud anyone who can study math at MIT for four years or six or eight years.

[121] I was good at math and I was doing, you know, there was a point in high school where you had to double up if you wanted to end up and do trig and pre -calc and then calc if you wanted to do that.

[122] You had to take two at once.

[123] And I just had this moment of clairvoyancy where I was like, what am I, what do I think I'm going to do, work for NASA?

[124] What is the end goal of all this math.

[125] And buddy, I pulled the parachute and I never looked back.

[126] Yeah.

[127] Yeah.

[128] My only math now is deducting like what year it is from the year you're born.

[129] Well, you love doing math on here.

[130] I love doing fast addition and subtraction.

[131] So you, did you change then your major wallet MIT?

[132] Yeah, I did a master's thesis and modeling, learning to learn, you know, which Harry Harlow had found that if you teach monkeys a two -choice discrimination, you know, they have to be able to tell one thing from another.

[133] They learn it as a nice learning curve.

[134] Then if they go to three -choice discrimination, there's another learning curve.

[135] By the time you do four, they just get it right away.

[136] Really?

[137] So they've learned how to solve that kind of problem.

[138] And so I created a mathematical model for that kind of discontinuity where at a certain point, everything flips.

[139] And it's kind of like the Malcolm Gladwell's tipping point idea.

[140] Right.

[141] Like you hit critical mass or something.

[142] Right, exactly, yeah.

[143] And did you find that your background in mathematics gave you a kind of unique perspective on psychology?

[144] Yeah, it really did.

[145] You know, it took a long time to develop, but, you know, when Bob Levinson and I found that we could predict the future of a relationship so accurately, you know, we started off with just no hypotheses.

[146] Bob and I, our relationships of the women were, you know, terrible.

[147] We went from one disaster or another.

[148] So we were two clueless guys who thought, let's study relationships.

[149] And at that point, psychology was at a critical point because the guy named Walter Michelle had written the book saying, it's not a science if you can only account for 9 % of human variation.

[150] 91 % is error.

[151] You know, that's not very impressive.

[152] Did this overlap with that kind of hoax that was perpetuated on psychology where the guy from England, he sent like nine different students to nine different psychiatric wards.

[153] And then they were admitted and all they could say was, I hear the word thud in my head.

[154] And then after that, they had to tell the truth.

[155] Are you aware of this whole thing?

[156] No, no. I don't know that study.

[157] Oh, it's great.

[158] These people who just simply said, I'm hearing the sound, the word thud in my head.

[159] And then they told the truth, well, of the nine of them, eight of them got pretty significant, you know, pathological diagnoses.

[160] Right.

[161] Ranging from schizophrenia to multiple.

[162] Right.

[163] And so this was kind of exposed the lack of uniform assessment, right, or diagnosis in that field.

[164] Well, that was Walter Michelle's challenge.

[165] So when Bob and I followed up these original 30 couples that we studied in this lab, that synchronized physiology with the video time code.

[166] That's all we really did.

[167] And what kind of physiological markers were you monitoring, like heart rate?

[168] Heart rate, blood velocity.

[169] skin conductness, how much they were sweating from the palms of their hands, respiration, how much they're moving around, and stuff like that.

[170] And what year is this?

[171] 1974, when we started working together.

[172] And again, you had no idea where it was going to go.

[173] Right.

[174] You just thought along the way you might be able to recognize some patterns.

[175] Right.

[176] That was the plan.

[177] And so you just start interviewing people.

[178] At that time, were they married or just people in relationships?

[179] Yeah, they were 30 married heterosexual couples.

[180] And, you know, we measured a whole bunch of things with questionnaires, how happy they were in their relationship and, you know, various other things, and then had them talk about how the day went after they've been apart for eight hours.

[181] And once we got a good signal on the physiological measures, then interviews them about their major conflicts and said, okay, take the major conflict and try to resolve it in the next 15 minutes.

[182] We don't know what we were doing, so we think what the hell.

[183] Yeah, yeah.

[184] And then we had them talk about a positive topic.

[185] And then we showed them their videotapes, you know, the split -screen version, and had them just turn a dial that went from very negative to very positive, independently of one another, tell us what they were feeling in the interaction.

[186] And then we just sent them home.

[187] Okay.

[188] We didn't have any clue how to help them.

[189] Right.

[190] Then we re -contact them.

[191] You're almost like an anthropologist at this point.

[192] You're just observing.

[193] You have no real.

[194] That's right.

[195] So, you know, what my interest was, it wasn't emotion, and Bob was interested in emotion, too.

[196] So we coded their emotional behaviors, sort of facial expressions, voice tone, what they were saying, how they were saying it, how they moved, and how they talked to one another, you know.

[197] I mean, like, for example, a lot of stuff was really obvious.

[198] Like one guy, says to his wife, why don't you go first talking about your day?

[199] It won't take you very long.

[200] Right?

[201] So right away, he starts with contempt.

[202] Uh -huh, yeah, yeah.

[203] So it wasn't like subtle.

[204] Right.

[205] Observing these couples.

[206] Yeah.

[207] I mean, you could see, you know, you could cut the hostility with a knife in some couples.

[208] Yeah.

[209] And you could cut the tenderness with a knife and other couples, right?

[210] So we just described it.

[211] Then three years later, we re -contacted the same couples, have them come back again, studying them again.

[212] And I remember a phone call.

[213] call from Bob one Saturday morning when he said, have you ever counted for 90 % of the variation?

[214] That's what our data was showing.

[215] We could predict with almost complete certainty what was going to happen to a marriage.

[216] Who would divorce and who would stay together?

[217] And how happy they would be or unhappy they would be, how they would change over three years, basically.

[218] Right.

[219] And that kind of blew our minds.

[220] And, you know.

[221] Yeah, you kind of fell backwards into that.

[222] Yeah.

[223] Right.

[224] It was like an accident.

[225] Can I ask a quick question.

[226] And I want to explain because when I read that contempt is the main engine for divorce, I had to really think about what contempt is and tell me where I'm wrong about my.

[227] This is how I try to explain to other people where the simplest example would be instead of my wife is a bitch.

[228] No, sometimes my wife is bitchy.

[229] On a certain day, she can be bitchy.

[230] She's not a bitch.

[231] Once I label her as some kind of a permanent condition, it's sort of.

[232] her character now I've decided is bitchy or impatient or any of these things.

[233] When I, when I label it as a permanent condition, I'm now in contempt.

[234] Does that?

[235] No, that's criticism.

[236] That's criticism.

[237] Yeah.

[238] Okay, so delineate for me exactly.

[239] Okay.

[240] So criticism is, expressing your complaints as a defect in your partner's personality or character.

[241] So saying she's a bitch, saying, you know, she's stupid.

[242] is, you know, that's criticism, but the contempt has a superior quality to it.

[243] Right.

[244] You're flawed in this way, and I'm not.

[245] Right.

[246] That's the basic communicating.

[247] But isn't there also some level of, like, permanence to it?

[248] Because once there's a permanence to it, it's very defeatist.

[249] It's like, this person's crazy.

[250] I hear all the time, like, oh, my girlfriend's crazy.

[251] And I'm like, well, there's no fix in crazy.

[252] So if that's what you think, you're eventually going to get yourself out of this, right?

[253] That's right.

[254] Both criticism and contempt have that permanent quality.

[255] So if you say, you know, sometimes my wife can be impatient.

[256] And that's a problem for me. And, you know, what I really wish is that she would do this.

[257] And when I, you know, when I start talking to her, you know, just wait for me to finish.

[258] Yeah.

[259] That's not criticism.

[260] That's just, you know, that's a healthy way of complaining.

[261] It's so weird the power of your language, right?

[262] So once you start using this language, whether it's past tense, present tense, You know, it builds a mode around that idea.

[263] So I said to myself as a pledge, I'm never going to label her as something going forward.

[264] That's a good choice.

[265] And it's tempting, though.

[266] Right.

[267] You know what I'm saying?

[268] Like, my instinct is to do that, and I have to actually catch myself.

[269] And I'll go, no, she's not that.

[270] Just in this moment, in this context, God knows what led up to this moment.

[271] You know, I found it disagreeable.

[272] But it'll be different tomorrow, and it could be different.

[273] different the day after that.

[274] There's no permanence to it.

[275] Yeah, when you describe, you know, what's going on that way as situational, then it kind of feeds your curiosity.

[276] You might even say, you know, what's the matter, baby?

[277] You seem kind of stressed this morning.

[278] Yeah.

[279] You know.

[280] Well, right.

[281] Especially if you're starting from a place which is, no, I know you're sane.

[282] I know you're generous and I know you're loving.

[283] Right.

[284] So I know that's who you are.

[285] Yeah.

[286] So this little behavior today is basically abnormal.

[287] So what's going on?

[288] How can I help?

[289] Yeah.

[290] By the way, I've now extended that to my children, which is it's very tempting to say, oh, that kid's messy or that kid's this.

[291] And I'll remind myself all the time out loud, no, she's nothing yet.

[292] She's just acting this way today.

[293] Well, you know, in studying parent -child interaction, we came up with a thing that we could.

[294] called the parental agenda, which is that, you know, we all worry about certain things about our kids, you know, like one kid takes too many risks, another kid is not brave enough, you know, and sort of hangs back, another kid is not generous enough or not empathetic enough, and other one's too empathetic and gullible, right?

[295] So it's natural for parents to worry about their kids and have a checklist of what they want, you know, their kids to be like.

[296] But you're right, when you label a kid as being a certain way, then it's hard for them to dig out.

[297] Yeah.

[298] Be different.

[299] Yeah.

[300] Well, you get all this confirmation bias loop where it's like you're expecting something from them to confirm what you've labeled them and then they live up to it in a weird way, right?

[301] That's right.

[302] That's right.

[303] And that's the sad thing.

[304] When they hear the label, the tragedy is that they will believe it.

[305] Yeah.

[306] My dad is telling me I'm lazy.

[307] So I must be that kind of person.

[308] And so what does the person like that do?

[309] And then I'll become that kind of person.

[310] Well, the other big trap we fall into a lot, too, that we have to police ourselves on is the oldest one's her and the younger one's me. You know, and there's a lot of subtext to that.

[311] Because if they only hear the part where I say, you're me, and there's nothing necessarily destructive about that.

[312] But then they pick up later, mom says, dad's this.

[313] Well, then I must be that.

[314] Because if A equals B and B equals C, then, you know.

[315] And so that's a really easy trap for me to fall into.

[316] Because my own ego wants to see a resemblance in this thing I created.

[317] Right.

[318] You know, I want to share this identity with this child I love so much.

[319] And then I start superimposing all this stuff on her unfairly just because I want to feel close.

[320] Like my instinct is probably sweet, but then the result can be a little dangerous.

[321] Yeah, I might leave you kind of blind.

[322] to who she really is.

[323] Exactly.

[324] I keep trying to tell myself, oh, no, she's a whole other thing that'll probably exceed anything I like about myself.

[325] That's right.

[326] Yeah.

[327] Yeah.

[328] It's really hard to keep that door open to discover.

[329] To let your kids surprise you.

[330] Yeah.

[331] Do you have children?

[332] Yeah, I have one.

[333] You do, a boy or a girl.

[334] She's a girl, yeah.

[335] Uh -huh.

[336] But it turned me into an instant feminist.

[337] Yeah, sure.

[338] You know, I kept going around with my four -year -old daughter and, you know, I had knocked on the door of a bus, and a woman was driving, and I'd say, can you tell my daughter about your job?

[339] And then, you know, I'd say, well, so she drives this big bus.

[340] There are two buses connected with an accordion thing, you know, and I'd say, look at that.

[341] A woman can do anything.

[342] And she says, I know, Papa, and also have babies, right, you know, became this thing, you know, between us.

[343] Yeah.

[344] Okay, so how long did you stay at MIT?

[345] Two years.

[346] And then when do you move out to Washington and why?

[347] Well, after I got my Ph .D. in clinical psychology, I went to UC Medical Center to do a postdoc in clinical psychology.

[348] And then my first job was at Indiana University.

[349] That's where I met Bob Levinson.

[350] And from there, I moved to the University of Illinois, and I was there for 10 years.

[351] But you were.

[352] Yeah.

[353] And Bob and I collaborated there, and I had my own psychophysiology lab as well.

[354] But my interest was a lot, not just in a couple relationships, but also in.

[355] and parent -child relationships.

[356] And when I moved to the University of Washington, 1986, I built a lab, and Julie helped me. Your life?

[357] Yeah, we met then.

[358] And so she's a frustrated architect, and she designed this apartment lab where we saw 130 newlywed couples.

[359] And as they became pregnant, we started studying them.

[360] And I have a lot of friends who are experts in studying babies.

[361] So I learned how to study babies and a parent -infant interaction.

[362] And in this set of research studies of what happens to a relationship when a baby comes, I got to know 222 babies.

[363] Oh, wow.

[364] And watch the babies with the parents and watch that babies grow up and develop.

[365] It was so much fun.

[366] Well, now, and so this to me is a fascinating area and very, I think, counterintuitive.

[367] I think when you fantasize about getting married and having a child, your expectation is joy and happiness and fulfillment, which, of course, that's there as well.

[368] But I think people underestimate the stress on the relationship.

[369] That's exactly true.

[370] So we found two -thirds of our couples when a baby arrived in the first three years of the baby's life, relationship happiness went down the tubes.

[371] Just really, two -thirds of the couples was like.

[372] They must have cited you in brain rules for babies, because we read the little part on relationships in that book.

[373] Right.

[374] And I was like, okay, heads up.

[375] So 66 % chance we're going to suffer some downhill.

[376] So, you know, Julie and I studied the third of couples that sailed through the transition to parenthood.

[377] And they were actually different just a couple of months after the wedding.

[378] They started different, which was really interesting, especially the men.

[379] The men were different.

[380] That's why.

[381] Different in what ways?

[382] They were kinder.

[383] They were less contemptuous.

[384] They were more respectful to their wives.

[385] And they had an easier time with their wives being pregnant.

[386] You didn't hear them say stuff like, well, she's, you know, like one guy said, you know, she's as big as a whale.

[387] You know, I'm not attracted to her.

[388] Yeah.

[389] I got much hornier for my wife when she changed shape.

[390] Me too.

[391] Yeah.

[392] It's so cool.

[393] It almost feels like you're cheating on your wife, like you're getting a pass, you know?

[394] You know, there's new boobs in the mix?

[395] Where are those things come from?

[396] Wow, I didn't realize you had those, you know.

[397] That's exciting.

[398] Yeah, so, you know, the guys who were saying, boy, you know, she closed.

[399] She looks really, you know, I just love this, you know.

[400] They had totally different babies.

[401] So we found that if we looked at how a couple talked about a disagreement in the last trimester, we could predict what that baby would be like.

[402] Tell me, please.

[403] Give me an example of that.

[404] Well, if, you know, if the conflict that they had in the last trimester was kind, respectful, generous, then the baby was relaxed.

[405] The baby's physiology was different.

[406] So the baby actually had higher vagal tone.

[407] So the vagus nerve is, the 10th cranial nerve is the biggest nerve in our body, and it's responsible for creating calm and focusing attention.

[408] And they had higher vagal tone.

[409] In fact, we could predict half of the variation in a vagal tone from the way the parents talk to each other in the last trimester.

[410] Let me ask you, does it have anything to do with the fact that when mom and dad are fighting, it's not going well, and mom's doing basically a cortisol dump, isn't she?

[411] That's totally what the mechanism is that we think.

[412] So mom's getting into kind of a fight or flight mode and cortisol dump, and that's affecting the baby, right?

[413] The baby is so sensitive to what the mother is feeling that you can play music to a mother.

[414] The baby doesn't hear the music through earphones, right?

[415] If you play music, the mother hates.

[416] She's secreting cortisol, and the baby moves a lot more.

[417] Oh, wow.

[418] And if you're playing music that she likes, no matter what it is, it can be, you know, grunge, hard rock, anything, whatever, or classical music, if she likes it, the baby's calm.

[419] Oxytocin starts coming out?

[420] Yeah.

[421] So isn't that so fascinating?

[422] You really are directly affecting that intra -uner environment.

[423] So it's very important when a woman is pregnant that she feels safe and loved and cherished.

[424] Well, I wonder then in this book we read, because they clearly referenced your work, I wonder then, were you a part of the prescriptive anecdote?

[425] Because what we read that I took to heart was the key things that will lead to that degradation of the quality of the relationship.

[426] is dad doesn't do his half of the work.

[427] Do you have anything to do with that?

[428] That's part of it, yeah.

[429] You know, what Julie and I wound up designing just a 10 -hour workshop that could reverse that drop -in relationship happiness for almost 80 % of couples and 10 hours.

[430] And what things were you teaching?

[431] And the ingredients were Dad's being more involved.

[432] But the secret to Dad's being more involved was that there had to be less fighting with mom.

[433] And there had to still be romance and connection.

[434] Well, I would imagine a woman wants a lot of reassurance post that experience of their body just changing so dramatically.

[435] I would imagine that's a good time to be letting them know, hey, I still adore you and I'm attracted to you.

[436] That's right.

[437] So the secret was, were those two things, maintaining intimacy and decreasing conflicts, so it was much more gentle and constructive.

[438] but also learning something about babies.

[439] So, you know, we kind of taught dads about babies and how important they are to the development, emotional and intellectual development of both sons and daughters.

[440] The father is critical because the one place that we men shine is we know how to play.

[441] Uh -huh, uh -huh.

[442] It's funny you'd say that because my wife, and I'm glad she actually is grateful for it.

[443] Yeah, my job is wrestler.

[444] Like an hour a night, I'm wrestling those two girls, and she knows they need to do that.

[445] Like, they're little monkeys that need to try out their balance and their physical fitness.

[446] And yeah, that's not for her.

[447] Yeah.

[448] And it is for me. But what I selfishly wanted to do half, not because I want to change diapers, but I'm a no -it -all.

[449] And I wanted an equal say in how we're going to raise these kids.

[450] And I just felt like you don't get an equal say if you're not doing an equal amount of the work.

[451] That's a good point.

[452] And I want to say something else that I experienced, which, so I'm sober.

[453] I've been sober for 14 years.

[454] And I've seen numerous guys who are struggling and they believe when that child arrives, they're going to get sober.

[455] This is a very common fallacy for men to believe in AA, is that they're having a hard time.

[456] They're struggling.

[457] But when that kid gets here, that's going to straighten them out.

[458] That'll be the thing that's worth living for.

[459] And it is almost always the opposite.

[460] And it always confused me until I myself had kids.

[461] So I had been sober for nine years when we had our first kid.

[462] And I started having thoughts I don't have anymore that I have been freed of that obsession.

[463] But once I was responsible for this kid and I got to be extra general around mom because she's very emotional.

[464] And I'm just serviced so much all day long to these two people, I start feeling selfishly like, I deserve something.

[465] I need something for me. I found myself having this kind of throwback very, all these selfish impulses, both thinking about women, thinking about drugs, thinking about anything that would be my treat for having to be of service to these people.

[466] And then in that moment I thought, I don't speak for everyone, but I thought, oh, I bet that's what's going on with these people who try to get sober.

[467] It must be.

[468] You feel sorry for yourself.

[469] You do.

[470] You get into a little bit of self -pity because you're not sleeping and you're, again, you are of service.

[471] And you're giving, giving, giving, giving, yeah, right.

[472] And getting a shitty diaper as your thank you.

[473] Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

[474] You know, but I think it's a big revelation to fathers, especially expectant fathers, that they are so important.

[475] Yeah.

[476] It's, I mean, it just blows their minds, really.

[477] When we do those workshops and we say, what you do makes a big, big difference.

[478] Yeah, because most of us grew up in an era where dad had to put food in the fridge.

[479] Right.

[480] And if he went to a couple baseball games, he was the best dad on the block.

[481] That's right.

[482] And I know for most of the time on Earth, we lived in not monogamous relationships.

[483] We generally, there was a team of women and a team of dudes.

[484] A lot of guys had two wives and some had none, you know.

[485] Because there's not a prescriptive blueprint.

[486] for how we do this, can we argue that there's a historical context for men being really involved?

[487] Like, do you feel like this is a return to that, or do you think this is a new development in our journey?

[488] Well, you know, a lot of anthropologists think that there was a belief that in our ancestors, that if more than one male had sex with a woman and she became pregnant, they were all fathers.

[489] And so it was kind of a good strategy for a woman to do that, to seek out particularly successful guys who could feel like they had a stake in that baby.

[490] So there is some evidence that non -monogamy was actually effective way back in the hunter -gatherer phase of development.

[491] Yeah, so a lot of anthropologists are saying that at a certain point in our development, maybe 30 ,000 years ago, which is pretty recent.

[492] monogamy was invented as a way for, you know, a woman to find a way to invest a lot of resources in one child.

[493] Well, as you get this specialized division of labor that came with civilization, right?

[494] Now you're not, because what hunting and gathering cultures had over us is they had the network of women sharing all these roles and being aunts to all the children, right?

[495] Most women had their babies at the same time.

[496] It was kind of a group effort.

[497] And as we get this division of labor, now that structure changes in a way that probably dad needs to be more involved.

[498] Yeah, maybe 10 ,000 years ago.

[499] Right.

[500] With the invention of agriculture and things change a great deal.

[501] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[502] We've all been there.

[503] Turning to the Internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, dilating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[504] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[505] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[506] Hey, listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[507] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

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[511] What's up, guys?

[512] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good.

[513] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[514] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[515] And I don't mean just friends.

[516] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[517] The list goes on.

[518] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[519] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[520] So when you're advising in this 10 -hour workshop you offered, you're advising that dad be involved.

[521] You're letting dad know that he plays a really huge role.

[522] Right.

[523] And it's a lot of fun.

[524] Even to diaper a baby.

[525] because you get this eye contact and play that happens there.

[526] You know, giving a kid a bath is really, it's just fun.

[527] Yeah.

[528] And they, you know, there's nothing more interesting than your face and your voice.

[529] You can't construct a toy for a baby that's more interesting than a parent's voice and face.

[530] Yeah.

[531] And when dads realize that it's fun to do this stuff, they really get involved.

[532] So after our workshop, you know, we have dads, it's the only intervention that has dads being involved.

[533] with daughters and sons and involved in housework and involved in child care.

[534] So it really does work.

[535] Do you think there's any kind of societal, historical baggage that would lead men to feel emasculated by that process?

[536] Do you think, like, culturally, is there anything that we see that some guys would maybe feel that way about it?

[537] Well, you know, I think it's the opposite.

[538] I think that women make men feel incompetent as fathers.

[539] You know, there's a society of women that surrounds the expected mother and officially sort of tells dad to go away.

[540] Right.

[541] We don't need it.

[542] Yeah, butt out.

[543] Well, and again, and dad had not earned a place at the table to begin with.

[544] Right.

[545] Historically.

[546] It's very true.

[547] I would say they deserve to tell him to butt out.

[548] They deserve to tell him that.

[549] You can't show up at 7 o 'clock at night and say you're doing all this wrong and then have your cocktail and go to bed.

[550] But, you know, in our workshop, you know, we have to help the mom realize that keeping dad involved with the baby benefits everybody so that they actually have to put the brakes on, you know, mom coming in and taking over or sister coming in and taking over or a best friend coming in and let dad do things.

[551] Let dad have the baby, yeah, make mistakes and have the baby for an evening and, you know, and realize.

[552] that, you know, he can do it.

[553] Now, it may not be as great as she is at it, but he can do it pretty well.

[554] Right.

[555] So when you get to Washington, so the work you're doing, you never have stopped interviewing couples, right?

[556] Right.

[557] From the MIT days to the University of Washington.

[558] Yeah, pretty much.

[559] You have decades of video exchanges, yeah?

[560] We do, yeah.

[561] We have just thousands of tapes.

[562] And, you know, and they've all been scored, you know, with these observational system that tell us what's going on moment to moment, and then we can synchronize that with what's happening in the body and what people are thinking at the same time.

[563] So it gives us kind of a window on, you know, what makes things work.

[564] So I mentioned contempt, but there's four that you identified, yeah?

[565] Right.

[566] We call them the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

[567] It's such an optimistic term, yeah.

[568] Yeah, the book of Revelations is a great read.

[569] both Bob and I had to learn how to code facial expressions and learned Paul Ekman's and Wally Frieson's facial action coding system, 46 muscles in the face moving around.

[570] And the most fascinating thing if I've got these guys right, I think I saw a documentary on them.

[571] Yeah.

[572] What they found, which blows my mind, is as they were trying to document every conceivable facial expression, they found that when they'd say, oh, do 14, which is, let's say, sadness.

[573] that the physical act of making the face actually produce the emotions of sadness, that it went both ways, right?

[574] That's right.

[575] So there's an internal program that changes the face, and it appears to be cross -culture universal.

[576] And it's a two -way system.

[577] So I sometimes, like, as an experiment, like, I'm feeling shitty.

[578] And I force myself to smile and see if I can't, like, work it backwards.

[579] Just, you know, for shits and giggles.

[580] It's about 10 % effective if you want to try it.

[581] But one of the things I found really fascinating from the Blink story about you is that.

[582] Right.

[583] So if you watch it, you watch a couple talk for one hour.

[584] Right.

[585] You're in the 90s for being able to predict whether or not they will get divorced.

[586] Right.

[587] Am I saying that correctly?

[588] That's right.

[589] Yeah.

[590] But you can watch it for 15 minutes and still be in the 80s, right?

[591] 88%.

[592] 88 % in 15 minutes, yeah.

[593] And then I think it even went one increment lower.

[594] Like, I think he said that you could watch for five minutes.

[595] So we did that, you know, we just kind of, you know, we had them talk for 15 minutes, and then we said, what if we cut off the last three minutes and it was still good?

[596] And then we cut off another three minutes and we went down to the first three minutes and we could still predict the future of the relationship.

[597] Not at 90 % accuracy.

[598] But still above 70 or something.

[599] Really, really well.

[600] Just the way people begin the conflict discussion turns out to be very, very important.

[601] And so I really want people to think about that because that is so powerful that it's that telling the relationship you're in and how you're treating your partner that the way you would treat her or him in three minutes is that telling.

[602] I find that very encouraging.

[603] I think some people might find that somewhat depressing, but I find that to be so encouraging that we can isolate these things and we can avoid them because we, How do you even know what to avoid?

[604] Well, you know, we do this in our couple's workshop.

[605] We talk about softened startup.

[606] What's that?

[607] What's a softened startup?

[608] So softened startup is going from that critical thing.

[609] And we actually do this exercise with the audience.

[610] And we say, okay, so here's a situation.

[611] Your mother -in -law is coming for dinner tonight.

[612] She always criticizes something about the way your home is or how you treat the children.

[613] and you really want your husband to support you tonight, you know, if your mother -in -law is critical.

[614] So here's the harsh startup.

[615] You know, your mother is a wart on the back of humanity.

[616] Okay, so that's a 10.

[617] Now, so the softened startup is I feel about what, and here's what I need, here's my positive need.

[618] So we do this exercise with the audience.

[619] And, you know, and people say, well, you know, I feel kind of scared that your mother -in -law's, your mother is coming over tonight.

[620] And if she criticizes me, again, I would like you to stand up for me and support me, you know, and speak up for me. Like, tell you mom, you think I'm a great mother.

[621] But tell you mom, you know, you love the way I keep house or something like that.

[622] Yeah.

[623] So, and then the audience just comes up with this, comes up with different.

[624] And we give them like 20 different harsh startups.

[625] and they convert it to a gentle startup.

[626] Well, the need is so critical.

[627] Right.

[628] It is right.

[629] Not what you don't need, but what you do need.

[630] Yeah, and it's really hard for people to state what they need.

[631] I find it hard.

[632] And then you have to remember, like, even the most well -intentioned person can't guess what you need.

[633] Exactly.

[634] Yeah, and so you're saying it a little different than I learned it, but yes, these eye messages, and I think these are really important for people to understand.

[635] When you say, you scared the shit out of me when you came in the house and slammed the door, you're going to then end up in an argument about his intentions or her intentions.

[636] And if you tell me, I tried to scare the shit out of you, I'm going to say, no, I didn't.

[637] I would never try to scare the shit out of you.

[638] Now, if you say, hey, when you slam the door, I got really scared.

[639] I can't argue how you felt.

[640] I have to take you at face value.

[641] I can't tell you you didn't feel scared.

[642] That's very insightful.

[643] And you just explained what physically happened.

[644] I shut a door loudly.

[645] And so from there we can get to a place of, oh, I'm so sorry, I would have never tried to scare you.

[646] Now what can I do differently?

[647] But when you start with an accusation that you tried to scare me or that you tried to piss me off or any one of these things, I'm going to fight to the death because I know I don't have those intentions against you.

[648] Right.

[649] So that's where the arguments happen is that you're attacking.

[650] a person's intentions.

[651] So, you know, for a couple of years, we actually try to study what were the intentions in each message.

[652] We asked people, what did you intend when you said this?

[653] Intentions were always positive.

[654] Yeah.

[655] Even when the impact was negative, the intention wasn't negative.

[656] It was, you know, it's exactly what you're saying.

[657] Yeah.

[658] You know, people inadvertently say things or do things.

[659] A word lousy communicators, just in general.

[660] 95 % of us, we're not great at articulating what we feel or think.

[661] Well, that's true.

[662] But, you know, it's also because there are two brains in a relationship.

[663] And the chances that your headspace is going to be the same as your partner's headspace are, you know, almost zero, right?

[664] You're just going to be in different frames of mind.

[665] So, you know, it's not that the probability of communicating perfectly all the time is so low, You know, just because we have two different minds in a relationship.

[666] Right.

[667] So the need is really, really interesting, and I like that part of it.

[668] The positive need is really critical because what you want to do is really present your partner with a recipe for how to shine for you.

[669] Right.

[670] And if you can do that and be pretty specific about it, then, you know, your partner can, you know, can agree that they'll do that or try to do that.

[671] But they...

[672] Well, you have to give at least minimally, even if you want to leave the person, you have to give...

[673] them the opportunity to have stated at least clearly what you want and see if they can't meet that or fail at that.

[674] But if you've not given them your need, you're not, you can't really justifiably evaluate them because you didn't really tell them.

[675] That's right.

[676] Yeah.

[677] Most people really do want to meet their partner's needs.

[678] They don't know what they are, but, you know, like if Julie says, you know, I really need you to be quiet for the next 10 minutes because, you know, I've got to concentrate on something.

[679] I have no problem.

[680] You call out your harmonica.

[681] Now, so let me ask you this.

[682] So you were divorced twice before you met Julie.

[683] Correct.

[684] And where did those lie within your studies?

[685] You hadn't cracked it yet or you just, you're a human like all of us?

[686] You know, when you do a study, you know, you kind of, you want to predict how it's going to come out.

[687] So Bob and I, when we started, we didn't have any predictions of how it was going to come out.

[688] But after a while, we kind of, you know, felt like we got smarter.

[689] The data taught us things.

[690] And at a certain point, I wanted to see, well, how much smarter have I gotten?

[691] So I wrote down how he thought the study was going to come out and put it in a notebook and put it away, and then analyze the data, wrote up, you know, the articles for publication with Bob, and then went back to my notebook.

[692] And my predictions were wrong 60 % of the time.

[693] Okay.

[694] So a majority of the time I was wrong.

[695] And wrong about what kinds of things?

[696] Oh, like, you know, here's one.

[697] And I, you know, that ratio of positive to negative, given my screwed up relationships in the past, I thought if couples were as positive as they were negative, that'd be a great relationship.

[698] Like 50 -50.

[699] Yeah, it was 50 -50.

[700] I thought that would be a great relationship.

[701] And, you know, compared to my relationships, you know, it wasn't 50 -50.

[702] It was like 70 % crap, you know, and 30 % may be nice things.

[703] But it turned out the ratio of positive to negative.

[704] in good, stable, happy relationships during conflict was five to one, five times as many positive things as negative things.

[705] Well, and again, let's just get into that for one second because there's a great biochemical explanation for this, right?

[706] So your reward chemical versus your, you know, if you find a yummy apple on a tree as a hunting gatherer and you take a bite and it's sweet and juicy, you get a little dump of dopamine or, you know, right, oxygen, whatever thing, positive.

[707] message your brain tells you.

[708] It says, remember this tree.

[709] Now, if you eat a poisonous apple and you get violently ill, the chemicals scent are 10 times as strong as the positive ones, right?

[710] Exactly.

[711] Exactly.

[712] So we remember the negative one.

[713] So if you say, I love you 10 times to your wife, and then you call her a bitch on the 11th time, you're at square one.

[714] Chemically.

[715] Like, no human can compete with that.

[716] As smart as you are, right?

[717] Very well said.

[718] Okay.

[719] So the negative is so much more powerful that to offset it, do you need five times as many positive as negative?

[720] Right.

[721] Again, who would think that?

[722] You'd be like, well, in general, I'm pretty positive to you.

[723] I was blown away that was that high.

[724] Yeah.

[725] And that's during conflict.

[726] So in our apartment lab, where we're seeing 130 newlywed couples, when we compute that ratio for the masters of relationships, it's 20 to 1.

[727] 20 to 1.

[728] When they're just hanging out.

[729] Right.

[730] People are really overwhelmingly nice and kind and generous.

[731] What if that's just not your personality?

[732] Some of it feels like maybe certain personalities are better suited for this than others.

[733] Well, that's certainly true.

[734] But, you know, the dimension that makes people better suited for relationships is agreeability.

[735] There are some people who, you know, when their partner says something, you know, and they score high on this agreeability dimension.

[736] They say, interesting, oh, yeah, I can see that kind of makes sense.

[737] Let me try and understand that.

[738] Yeah, you know, and other people, their first reaction is bullshit, you know.

[739] You know, I can see the flaw in that, right?

[740] Contrarian.

[741] So it's a personality dimension.

[742] So agreeable people, they, you know, probably can partner with, you know, a big, wider range of other humans than somebody who's not so agreeable.

[743] They need a particular.

[744] kind of partner in order to really get that five -to -one ratio.

[745] Yeah.

[746] They've got to be with an agreeable partner probably.

[747] Yeah, interesting.

[748] Now, I'm imagining, though, you're pro -conflict, yes?

[749] Yeah, I mean, you know, I think conflict is inevitable.

[750] You'll meet couples, right, that say, oh, we never fight.

[751] That's true.

[752] And what do you think about that?

[753] Well, they're an interesting group.

[754] The ones who never fight, you know, we call them conflict avoiders, actually talk a lot.

[755] and find out how they disagree with one another, and then they kind of let it lie.

[756] They sort of accept these differences and let it lie.

[757] So, I mean, there are some conflict avoiders who just never talk.

[758] Right.

[759] You know, and they're fine, you know, the sort of Ma and Pa, kettle, you know, sort of image, you know, the strong silent woman and the strong silent guy.

[760] Right.

[761] And they like having independent, emotionally distant relationships.

[762] Those kind of couples do exist.

[763] But they're very rare.

[764] And most conflict avoiders actually will talk about a thing and they'll go, oh, so you think this way.

[765] Oh, that's why you think that way.

[766] And you find, you know, why I think this way and here's why I think that way.

[767] And then they kind of go, okay, we're done.

[768] Yeah, you know, I've had both.

[769] I had a nine -year relationship and now I'm in an 11 -half -year relationship.

[770] And the nine -year relationship, we never fought.

[771] We talk nonstop.

[772] I like to think we were both pretty good communicators.

[773] And I wouldn't say.

[774] one's better than the other or anything.

[775] There's really no, I have no takeaway judgment of it all.

[776] But then my current relationship were such opposites.

[777] It requires quite a lot of come to Jesus moments.

[778] You know, it's just, we're so we see the world so differently.

[779] We're coming from such different places.

[780] But don't you think a lot of this stuff, I think, I think people often in relationships believe that if they got their partner's behavior correct, the problems would be over.

[781] When in fact, you know where you're at emotionally a disagreement seeing something differently from your your partner can be very threatening if the foundation of your relationship feels shaky already yeah that's true right like it feels like the stakes of not agreeing are the end of the relationship yeah whereas if your partner's good at at reassuring you and letting you know that you're on very sturdy footing do you think those things, those are easier to overlook.

[782] Yeah, there's a critical hidden variable on all of that that a woman named Carol Rusbolt really taught us about.

[783] She did 30 years of work on this very question.

[784] And it has to do with whether, when you're fighting, do you make negative comparisons between your partner and real or imagined alternative relationships?

[785] So are you saying, I can do better?

[786] Who needs this crap?

[787] Right.

[788] I can do better.

[789] My partner is immature.

[790] My partner is defective in some way.

[791] I can do better.

[792] And when you do that, it's the beginning of the end.

[793] And that's what Carol Ruspoil showed us.

[794] Whereas if you're doing a positive comparison, you're saying, well, you know, this kind of sucks.

[795] But, you know, it's, you know, she's not like that or he's not like that really.

[796] You know, we'll get through this moment.

[797] And, you know, and there's a lot of good stuff in this relationship.

[798] Well, I've always kind of thought, oh, whoever I end up with, I'm going to end up in this exact same spot.

[799] Like, this is the nature of a relationship.

[800] The first six months are exciting and hot and heavy, and you're having so much sex, you're not even noticing all these other things.

[801] And those chemicals dissipate and then you're left with the person.

[802] You know, I just, I guess I've never succumbed to the illusion that you're going to be in a relationship that requires no word.

[803] Well, that's a very pro -relationship, pro -social relationship way to think.

[804] And Carol Russell, you know, talked about that as well.

[805] So you're thinking, well, you know, this is what happens.

[806] You know, the grass isn't greener, you know, over there.

[807] Right.

[808] You know, the lady at Starbucks who smiles at me really nicely the way my wife hasn't in the past week, you know, she's not any better an option.

[809] Yeah.

[810] You know.

[811] You also, to be honest with yourself, if you found this perfectly acquiescent human being, is that stimulating for you?

[812] Yeah.

[813] Would you even be attracted that?

[814] For sure, your life would be easier.

[815] Right.

[816] Definitely would be bored out of your fucking mind, right?

[817] That's right, exactly.

[818] Now, your wife, Julie, she is also in this field.

[819] You guys work together, right?

[820] Oh, absolutely.

[821] She's really the co -creator of all of this.

[822] And, you know, without her clinical insight, I would never have been successful.

[823] Yeah, what strengths does she have that you don't?

[824] Oh, my God.

[825] You don't have enough videotape for, audio tape for me to list all those.

[826] You know, basically she spent, you know, like 40 years really working with very damaged people.

[827] People who were combat veterans with PTSD, you know, from Vietnam, people who had were survivors of torture, incest, sexual abuse, people who were addicted to heroin, cocaine.

[828] Jack Shepherd types, I got you, okay.

[829] I'm really, I mean, worse than Zach Shepherd.

[830] You know, people who didn't get sober, people, you know, very damaged people, you know, some people who have been incested by their father for, you know, 16 years and, you know, then raped by somebody else, you know, really difficult, difficult case.

[831] Right.

[832] And she's a fountain of compassion.

[833] She's an amazing woman.

[834] That's how my wife is, too.

[835] Oh, yeah, you're lucky.

[836] Yeah.

[837] You know, I am too.

[838] And, you know, but she's very insightful.

[839] She has really, she's a really good judge of character.

[840] And I'll tell you a story.

[841] This is kind of a confluited story, but we used to fight a lot.

[842] We used to fight a lot.

[843] So I was kind of arrogant.

[844] I'm the scientist.

[845] She's the clinician who are collaborating.

[846] I kept saying, where's your data?

[847] I think this, you know, where's your data?

[848] And, you know, we started working on helping, it was a national project to help couples who were in poverty and a baby was on the way.

[849] because the divorce rate was very high for those couples.

[850] They were generally unmarried.

[851] And so we started working with this population.

[852] And in psychology, they called them fragile families.

[853] So there's a fragile families project.

[854] And maybe 150 papers have been written out of Columbia and Princeton University by these very respected scholars.

[855] And I read the literature.

[856] And we were working with these couples.

[857] And I said, Julie, you know, these guys say that these guys aren't, aren't, they're not addicted and they're not violent and they're, you know, they're really okay, you know.

[858] And she said, bullshit.

[859] That's just not true.

[860] I know this population.

[861] I said, well, I've read these articles.

[862] I read the journal articles and that this is what they read the journal articles.

[863] She said, I don't have to read that.

[864] I've worked with them in Boston, you know, in the combat zone in the ghetto.

[865] And I said, well, you know, how can you disregard all this scholarship?

[866] So, you know, we're fighting about that.

[867] Right.

[868] And I'm the arrogant scientist.

[869] She's the clinician.

[870] I'm putting her down.

[871] But honey, it was peer reviewed.

[872] Yeah, that's right.

[873] Peer reviewed.

[874] And I said that.

[875] Sure.

[876] So we get to this conference in Washington, D .C. with these guys.

[877] And I take them aside, you know, and I'm very respectful because they're, you know, they're really very highly regarded scholars.

[878] And I say, you know, what I don't understand about your papers is that you say that these guys, have not been incarcerated.

[879] They don't have addiction.

[880] There's no domestic violence.

[881] And they say, yeah, we lied.

[882] Oh, really?

[883] We lied.

[884] Why did they lie?

[885] We never would have gotten funded.

[886] Oh.

[887] If we were trying to keep these relationships together with these men who were the scum of the earth.

[888] Uh -huh.

[889] Right.

[890] There would have been, what, no lack of compassion or?

[891] The funding agency would have said, well, women are better off alone.

[892] Right.

[893] And actually the women were not better off alone.

[894] These guys loved their babies.

[895] And they were trying really hard to make their lives different when this baby came.

[896] And we got involved, you know, and I just went, Julie's right.

[897] Yeah.

[898] And these guys, they lied.

[899] And I'm not doubting her anymore.

[900] Okay, I want to talk about a couple of the other four horsemen.

[901] So we have contempt.

[902] We have disagreement.

[903] No. No, criticism.

[904] Criticism, I'm so sorry.

[905] Of course disagreement is going to happen.

[906] Yeah, so criticism.

[907] Criticism is stating a problem as a defect in your partner's character.

[908] Okay.

[909] Contempt is feeling superior to your partner also when you do that.

[910] Yeah.

[911] And, you know, people are contemptuous in many, many different ways.

[912] I mean, one of my favorite is correcting somebody's grammar when they're angry with you.

[913] Oh, my goodness.

[914] That would send me right through the, I've never been a violent person, but that could really be.

[915] Yeah.

[916] Especially all the words I say wrong, right?

[917] Yeah.

[918] Although Monica kind of does that here.

[919] I do.

[920] Yeah.

[921] It's so endeared.

[922] It's just endearing.

[923] Yeah, you seem to like it.

[924] Yeah.

[925] Tell me about defensiveness, because that's one of the four.

[926] Defensiveness, you really had two forms.

[927] One was a counterattack, but an escalated counterattack.

[928] So, you know, you hit me with the four -pound cannonball.

[929] See how you like the 60 -pound cannonball.

[930] Okay.

[931] So, you know, you had this criticism.

[932] I've got 15.

[933] and and I'm going to, my criticism is going to really go below the belt.

[934] It's going to really get to you, right?

[935] It's going to hurt.

[936] It's going to hurt.

[937] And so that's one kind of defensiveness, counterattack.

[938] So it's, your partner makes an observation about some bit of your behavior.

[939] You're so selfish sometimes.

[940] Yeah.

[941] I can't believe it.

[942] Well, at least I don't fucking drive drunk.

[943] Yeah.

[944] They just go over the top.

[945] They find some other moral imperative that the is.

[946] That's right.

[947] Okay.

[948] I don't endanger the lives of our children like you do.

[949] Right.

[950] Right.

[951] By the way, I find this in politics.

[952] Like, every time they actually nail somebody for something, the response is always, well, that guy did it worse.

[953] It's like, well, hold on.

[954] We can get to that guy.

[955] Let's talk about your thing first.

[956] Yeah.

[957] That's one form of defensiveness.

[958] The other one is I'm blameless, the innocent victim posture.

[959] You know, my intentions are always positive.

[960] What are you picking on me for?

[961] You know, I never can do anything right for you.

[962] You've got an infinite list of things you want.

[963] I can never please you.

[964] I try so hard.

[965] I never get credit for all the good things I do in this relationship.

[966] You know, why are you so negative?

[967] Well, I'm glad you're saying that because my number one pet peeve, probably the number one thing I'm not attracted to is victimness.

[968] Victimhood, victimy personas.

[969] Right.

[970] And they appear on the surface.

[971] There's a wonderful thing in AA, which tells you the things to avoid.

[972] But, you know, in the list of self -aggrandizement is also self -pity.

[973] Self -pity is as narcissistic as self -aggrandizement.

[974] It's the exact same thing.

[975] It's the other side of the coin, which is, I'm so important, the universe is conspiring against me. That's right.

[976] That's right.

[977] And some people are so good at defensiveness that they can do the innocent victim and the counterattack at the same time.

[978] Really hard to deal with.

[979] This is one of the sharpest swords in the narcissists playbook, too, right?

[980] They're always a victim, no matter what the situation is.

[981] Right.

[982] They're always innocent.

[983] They're always good.

[984] You know, they're just, you know, they try so hard and, you know.

[985] They can never make you happy.

[986] And so there's something wrong with you, right?

[987] Right.

[988] You're unpleasable.

[989] Yeah.

[990] So it's turning it back on you.

[991] Uh -huh.

[992] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[993] So in defensiveness, I think, is really the work that we have to do in relationships is down -regulator on defensiveness.

[994] So how does someone do?

[995] do that.

[996] Well, my way of doing it is I have a little notebook in my back pocket.

[997] Okay.

[998] And I whip it out when Julie says the four most terrifying words in the English language, we need to talk.

[999] Uh -huh.

[1000] Uh -huh.

[1001] And I get out my little notebook and my pen.

[1002] I have handy and I go, I take a deep breath and I say, talk to me, baby.

[1003] Uh -huh.

[1004] And I write down what she's saying.

[1005] Oh, you do?

[1006] I write down everything she's saying.

[1007] And the more defensive I feel, the more I slow her down.

[1008] So I write down every word.

[1009] And tell me what is the purpose of that for you and for her?

[1010] You know, at first when I'm writing, I'm thinking, what a bitch, man. I can never please her, you know.

[1011] And then I'm going, well, that's a good point.

[1012] Do you think there's something physically that's happening that the act of writing is?

[1013] For me, it is the physical act of writing.

[1014] You know, I don't have to look at her face all the time.

[1015] I'm, you know, getting it down.

[1016] And then I look up, you know, every now and then.

[1017] You know, and I go, okay, slow down.

[1018] So what was that?

[1019] Let me get that.

[1020] Okay.

[1021] Well, let me ask you, though.

[1022] She's already maybe peeved with you.

[1023] And does she ever just like, put that fucking notebook down and look at me?

[1024] I could imagine that being irritating to someone if they were already hot at you.

[1025] You know, I think it could be.

[1026] You know, it works for me. Uh -huh.

[1027] And she knows that.

[1028] A solution is on the other side of that.

[1029] She knows that, you know, when I do that, I'm going to be more rational.

[1030] And isn't so much of this just breaking a pattern and kind of building some goodwill where it's like you got through the first time you wrote down the stuff and she found the result was a little better.

[1031] So maybe next time it was a little easier for her to witness this approach.

[1032] Yeah.

[1033] And then you're kind of just building goodwill and trust.

[1034] I once wrote for two and a half hours.

[1035] Oh, you really fucked up.

[1036] She talked for two and a half hours.

[1037] Uh -huh.

[1038] And I took 18 single -spaced pages of those.

[1039] Oh, my goodness.

[1040] She had a lot to say.

[1041] Yeah.

[1042] Yeah.

[1043] And it was great.

[1044] I mean, I've saved it.

[1045] Okay.

[1046] And I'd go back to it every now and then.

[1047] And I learned a lot of stuff about her that I didn't realize.

[1048] You know, and she said, I said, so, you know, we've got a couple of hours, one in this hotel room.

[1049] You know, we're going to give a talk in the evening.

[1050] But, you know, we got some time.

[1051] I said, so why didn't you tell me, you know, where are you at in your life, you know, right now because i probably don't know she said i'll tell you if you if you stay quiet oh two and a half hours no kidding yeah and i got i got to i got to talk you know after that and i talk for about a half an hour and you're a fan of timeouts right yeah yeah i think it's important to have your heart rate below 100 beats a minute at certain heart rates different areas of your brain for survival take over right and it just keeps getting more and more reptilian.

[1052] That's right.

[1053] You go into fight or flight or freeze.

[1054] Yeah, and you can't listen.

[1055] You're not taking an information.

[1056] Tell me about stonewalling.

[1057] So stonewalling was kind of a surprising thing that we saw 85 % of, and heterosexual couples, 85 % of the time, a guy would do this thing.

[1058] He would stop looking at her.

[1059] Mm -hmm.

[1060] He would stop nodding his head, stop uttering these brief vocalizations like you're doing.

[1061] Mm -hmm.

[1062] And just look away and down, sometimes fold his arms across his chest, and no facial movement, no vocalizations, very little eye contact, maybe an occasional glance.

[1063] And so we brought guys in and said, what are you thinking right in this moment, show them the tape, what are you thinking?

[1064] And it turns out what they're thinking is, you know, God, I just don't say anything.

[1065] You always make it worse.

[1066] Right.

[1067] I surrender.

[1068] It's kind of a surrender, right?

[1069] I have to endure this.

[1070] Yeah.

[1071] You know, and I can get through this.

[1072] But if I say anything, she's going to go ballistic.

[1073] It's bad enough the way it is.

[1074] Just endure.

[1075] Yeah.

[1076] And they're shutting down, right?

[1077] And they're suppressing what they want to say.

[1078] Well, I think for a lot of men, the emotional vocabulary is so daunting.

[1079] and even just discussing emotions is so daunting, that it's overwhelming.

[1080] And I think a lot of people do it just passive -aggressively.

[1081] But I also think for a lot of guys who had no training in that way, it's kind of overwhelming, isn't it?

[1082] Yeah, I think it is.

[1083] And you don't know what to say.

[1084] Well, yeah, and just if we look at how our, at least our culture works, girls get on a playground, they look at each other's faces, they talk to each other eye to eye, and they share feelings, and they share feelings.

[1085] They share fears, and boys play games where they avoid eye contact.

[1086] There's no emotion.

[1087] So there's zero practice almost for guys, right?

[1088] Yeah, for guys, it's really when an emotional event happens, you know, like a kid, you know, they're playing a run and chase game.

[1089] And, you know, some kid starts crying, you know, they'll stop the game and say, what's the matter?

[1090] I didn't get the ball.

[1091] Okay, give them the ball.

[1092] And they're done.

[1093] They don't talk about it like girls do.

[1094] Right.

[1095] And, you know, so the goal is keep the ball and play.

[1096] Keep the game going.

[1097] Whereas for girls, it seems to be the relationship is really the important thing.

[1098] Yeah.

[1099] It's not that they're playing hopscotch or they're doing something else.

[1100] It's that they're connecting the whole time.

[1101] They're connecting the whole time.

[1102] Yeah.

[1103] So men don't really get a lot of practice in dealing with emotion.

[1104] And then, of course, adolescence happens and you get intense lust.

[1105] Sure.

[1106] And then now you have to communicate with a female.

[1107] You've got no choice.

[1108] Yeah.

[1109] What do you do for those men who their defense is stonewalling and they don't know how to?

[1110] Breathe.

[1111] Pace breathing is very powerful.

[1112] Meditation is powerful.

[1113] But just sort of awareness that, oh, boy, this is a stonewalling moment for me. What do I do in this moment?

[1114] So I want to say, listen, I need a break.

[1115] We have this, we have three conflict blueprints, three separate blueprints.

[1116] for dealing with conflict.

[1117] One of them is dealing with past regrettable incidents that have happened that you haven't fully talked about.

[1118] Okay.

[1119] And for a lot of couples, those incidents that they try to get past, you know, and ignore, say, okay, that was just a bad situation.

[1120] Let's not talk about that.

[1121] That becomes like a stone in your shoe where you can't maintain intimacy anymore because there's been some betrayal of trust or some feeling.

[1122] like, you know, my partner's not on my side, really.

[1123] Right, right.

[1124] So we have a way of going through and processing that a five -step blueprint for talking about what did you feel, what were your perceptions, what triggers did you have, and where did they come from in your childhood, and they can be fears, they can be times when you were humiliated, disrespected, you know, and again, you're triggered and you feel disrespected in this moment, just, you know, rage.

[1125] Well, you're literally responding to the person when you were eight.

[1126] Exactly, exactly.

[1127] So understanding the triggers are very critical.

[1128] And so, you know, in my marriage, for example, you know, my mother -in -law was a formidable woman.

[1129] She could make her - Well, she raised a tough girl, so it doesn't surprise me. But she could make anybody defensive.

[1130] And so, you know, I began to understand, you know, how, you know, a lot of times when Julie got defensive.

[1131] It was because I was repeating something that reminded her of her mother.

[1132] Right.

[1133] And as I understood, her triggers, I could avoid those triggers.

[1134] Those were enduring vulnerabilities that we all have from the past.

[1135] So triggers are really important, I think.

[1136] Some of it's so simple.

[1137] Like my wife and I started off in couples counseling.

[1138] Like we, right from the get -go, we were in counseling together.

[1139] Wow.

[1140] That's unusual.

[1141] It is.

[1142] I had done couples counseling at the end of a relationship.

[1143] And to me, the ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure thing is so much easier.

[1144] I think, I really recommend people do it out of the gates because you get into these patterns, these kind of figure eight patterns you just can't get out of and they just get harder and hard.

[1145] They're quite simple to break at the beginning, though.

[1146] Right, right.

[1147] Yeah, so, you know, that voice of you saying that is so important because there's still a stigma about going to therapy going to see a counselor you know and people can get in very desperate straits and feel there's so much shame in going to see a therapist and it's seen as like it is failed and this is a last -ditch effort yeah and it would be so much better if people had the idea that it's kind of like coaching you know when you're learning a sport or learning how to play an instrument you know you need some correction or you develop bad habits and yeah and some of the some of the the advice, at least that our therapist, who I love gave us, Harry, they were just so practical and pragmatic.

[1148] He would be like, Kristen, you have depression.

[1149] You get quiet at times.

[1150] Dax is an ex -scumbag addict.

[1151] He's used to feeling like he's in trouble.

[1152] His mom was very talkative.

[1153] The only time she wasn't talking about when he was in trouble.

[1154] All you got to do to solve this pattern is like, when you're starting to feel a little low, you say, hon, I'm feeling quiet.

[1155] It has nothing to do with you.

[1156] And then I'm good.

[1157] I can go do my thing and I'm longer obsessing about what I did, and it's not triggering all the years of shame I carried around from when I was a shithead.

[1158] You know, like just a simple fucking sentence, hey, I'm feeling a little quiet, has nothing to do with you.

[1159] That's the kind of shit a therapist can just observe in you in a couple and just give you something so simple like that.

[1160] Yeah, I mean, you had a creative therapist who gave you really a blueprint, a solution that really worked.

[1161] Yes.

[1162] And knew both of you so well that he could suggest something.

[1163] that really went to the core of the problem.

[1164] But by the way, he did what you do.

[1165] He thin -sliced.

[1166] He watched us debate something for, and he didn't let us go more than 12 minutes.

[1167] Like, my breathing was elevated, hers was.

[1168] And he's like, stop, I know I see what's going on.

[1169] And we don't need to do this further.

[1170] Like, you know, if you're both well -intentioned, they're kind of easy fixes.

[1171] That's right.

[1172] That's right.

[1173] So, you know, it is important to know the triggers, though, because we all have them.

[1174] We all have the crazy buttons.

[1175] Yeah.

[1176] Now, do some people just, it's effortless for them?

[1177] Or is that an illusion?

[1178] I've never had it where it's effortless.

[1179] Some people just, there's high school sweethearts, and it's all easy, honky, dory?

[1180] No. It doesn't really exist, doesn't it?

[1181] I don't think it exists.

[1182] I had a next -door neighbor one time in Illinois, and she was like the center of the neighborhood, and her Christmas decorations were tasteful and perfect, and she was sweet, and her husband was sweet, her children looked great and healthy, and, you know, and I got to know her.

[1183] and I said, you know, if you're looking for a job, I need somebody like you in my lab.

[1184] Somebody can relate to people as well as you do.

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] You know, and so she said, yeah, I really would like a job.

[1187] And your work sounds very interesting.

[1188] So she worked in my lab, and I got to know her, and the problems were right there under the surface.

[1189] Right.

[1190] And they were big problems.

[1191] Yeah.

[1192] And, you know, and she struggled mildly to present this image of being perfect.

[1193] I thought she was perfect.

[1194] Well, and I think a lot of the reason there's a reservation to go see a counselor is you perceive that all your friends are, that they're living in bliss and that you're fundamentally flawed and that's embarrassing.

[1195] You're the loser.

[1196] You're the, you know, you always mess things up and, you know.

[1197] Yeah, I think it would be comforting to people to recognize.

[1198] No, every cohabitation is, it takes a lot of work and you're normal to struggle.

[1199] Well, Julie and I in our couples workshop, in the second day when we.

[1200] focus on conflict, we process an argument that we've had.

[1201] And we go through it.

[1202] And it's a real argument.

[1203] Just to tell people, look, we're in the same soup.

[1204] When you're in a relationship, we're all swimming in the same waters.

[1205] You can't learn enough to avoid, right?

[1206] That's right.

[1207] Yeah.

[1208] And, you know, it doesn't go away.

[1209] You know, when Julie says, we need to talk, I get defensive, you know.

[1210] And I'm not any less defensive than I used to be.

[1211] But I know what to do now.

[1212] I get the book out of my back pocket.

[1213] I get the pen and I go, talk to me. Now, if people, these people that you've observed, right, who are, maybe I would imagine some of them are displaying all four of these in one argument, right?

[1214] And you know that if they're, if they're exhibiting those, the 91 % chance they're going to get divorced.

[1215] Now, can that be interrupted?

[1216] Yeah.

[1217] So, you know, we have a blueprint for that.

[1218] And it's based on the work of a real brilliant guy who focused primarily an international conflict.

[1219] His name was Anato Rappaport.

[1220] Okay.

[1221] And he had this great thing that he did.

[1222] It was like a motto.

[1223] And here's what it was.

[1224] You postponed persuasion until each person can state their partner's point of view to their partner's satisfaction.

[1225] That's the rule.

[1226] Uh -huh.

[1227] So you don't get into persuading your partner that you're right and the partner's wrong or find the ideal solution or compromise until, you can state your partner's point of view to her satisfaction.

[1228] I mean, just imagine if people did that, you know, everywhere on the planet.

[1229] It's very powerful.

[1230] And so we give people...

[1231] Well, first of all, it just tells that person, I hear you.

[1232] Right.

[1233] Like, you're being heard, right?

[1234] That's an important thing to feel.

[1235] Well, and the important thing is it's a kind of listening where, you know, you're trying to do what Mr. Spock did in the old Star Trek, the Vulcan mind meld, where you're trying to really see her point of view from her eyes so that it makes sense to you.

[1236] And you're putting your own point of view on the back burner because she's going to do that for you too, right?

[1237] Right.

[1238] And so it's mutual, it's balanced, it's symmetrical.

[1239] But that kind of listening is very hard to do.

[1240] But once you do it, it's 95 % of solving a conflict.

[1241] Five percent of it is then problem solving.

[1242] But that's the easy part.

[1243] Once people feel understood and validated, you know, that their point of view makes some sense, you know, maybe not 100%, but some sense, then you're rolling the ball up together.

[1244] You know, you're rolling the ball up until together.

[1245] You're a team working on an issue together rather than antagonistically against one another.

[1246] Now, what role does sex play in relationships?

[1247] Oh, huge.

[1248] Huge role.

[1249] And, you know, and I, but I think the important thing to realize is everything is sex.

[1250] Tell me that.

[1251] To explain that.

[1252] You know, just getting up in the morning and, you know, telling your wife that she smells good and, you know.

[1253] I got you.

[1254] Like, everything is going to impact that part of the relationship.

[1255] It's all foreplay, right?

[1256] You know, just, you know, I get up before Julie does usually.

[1257] I can, you know, I make the coffee and empty the dishwasher and, you know, get stuff ready.

[1258] And I can look at the kitchen the way she looks at it, which is very different from the way I look at it.

[1259] But I can look at it now so that when she comes in, you know, she doesn't go, oh, Christ, Jesus, I have to clean this all up, you know, it's really a mess.

[1260] And so she's gone, she can walk in very sleepily and say, you're ready for your coffee?

[1261] And she goes, yeah, you know, and here's the coffee.

[1262] Yeah.

[1263] So, you know, you're always making love, I think.

[1264] You know, you're always connecting emotionally in some way, whether you mean to or not.

[1265] And so if you're, I think when you do those things.

[1266] Now, you know, you probably know this study that was done, the largest study you ever done on sex in the world.

[1267] 70 ,000 people in 24 countries.

[1268] Do you know this study?

[1269] No. Okay.

[1270] A colleague of mine, Pepper Schwartz, University of Washington, was involved in this study.

[1271] Great name, Pepper Shorts.

[1272] I would buy any number of products after it.

[1273] off of that person.

[1274] What they did was, they had one question, is there any systematic thing different about people who say they have a great sex life and people who say they have a bad sex life?

[1275] Uh -huh.

[1276] And is that universal?

[1277] They found like a dozen things that people do who have a great sex life.

[1278] Okay.

[1279] That people who don't have a great sex say, they don't do those things.

[1280] And there's simple things.

[1281] You would think they would be sex techniques or something like that.

[1282] Sure.

[1283] Outfits.

[1284] Certain positions.

[1285] Yeah, yeah.

[1286] Kama Sutra.

[1287] Yeah.

[1288] Yeah, yeah, now we're talking.

[1289] They say I love you every day, I mean it.

[1290] Uh -huh.

[1291] They give their partner compliments.

[1292] Mm -hmm.

[1293] They have a weekly romantic date, which is part of why we wrote this book, eight dates.

[1294] Right?

[1295] Okay.

[1296] They have romantic getaways.

[1297] Mm -hmm.

[1298] They make time for each other?

[1299] They make time for each other.

[1300] They cuddle.

[1301] Mm -hmm.

[1302] They, you know, even if they're watching TV together, they're on the couch holding each other.

[1303] Right.

[1304] express affection in public.

[1305] So all of these 12 things were so simple.

[1306] It's just not rocket science.

[1307] It's all one fabric.

[1308] And sex is a big part of that fabric.

[1309] Yeah, it's really, really crucial for intimacy, right?

[1310] Right.

[1311] Now, and I'm hesitant to perpetuate these male -female stereotypes, but I will just say in my anecdotal friendship circle, for men, it's very simple.

[1312] it's stupid how simple it is but men get their validation through sex like men i see the difference between like when a man hasn't had sex with his wife for seven days like i guess what i'm saying is you ask any married couple how long's it been since you guys had sex the guy'll know down to the hour and the woman generally won't in my circle yeah and i just recognize that for men it's this very simple way to be validated by your wife.

[1313] And then, of course, your wife requires a different validation than that.

[1314] And maybe I'm crazy.

[1315] Maybe some women feel the way these men do and some vice versa.

[1316] But sometimes I just think, I go on this other show sometimes and they have callers and they ask, and I'll just say, just minimally, if you can have sex with your husband once a week, you'd be shocked how many things that might solve for you.

[1317] Like, you just might be shocked.

[1318] And if you could just be the one to go first, I think in relationships, a lot of it's like, well, who's going to go first?

[1319] So it's like, wife may want like, well, hey, how about you notice me?

[1320] How about you talk to me?

[1321] How about you look me in the ice?

[1322] How about you take me to dinner?

[1323] All that stuff.

[1324] True.

[1325] He should do that.

[1326] Yeah.

[1327] But if he's resentful that you haven't, you guys haven't had sex in two weeks, he's not there to do.

[1328] So someone's got to go first.

[1329] And the easiest one to do is like, have sex with their husband.

[1330] Maybe let's see if then you bring up this other stuff.

[1331] Then he's feeling validated and he's open.

[1332] all these things.

[1333] But I just, sometimes it's like it becomes this power struggle from who's going to go first, who's going to be the first benevolent one, right?

[1334] Yeah, we asked a large group of couples, do you agree with this statement that for men, sex is a way to get intimate and close?

[1335] Whereas women only want sex when they already feel intimate close.

[1336] And 97 % of the couples, the people, you know, agreed to with that statement, that that was true as a gender difference.

[1337] And so I...

[1338] That's a great way to articulate it.

[1339] You know, I think it really is true.

[1340] Now, here's some other facts.

[1341] What percentage of the time in a marriage, when a guy, you know, really ask for sex, what percentage of the time does the women say yes?

[1342] What would you guess?

[1343] I'm very nervous.

[1344] I'm going to say only half the time.

[1345] 75%.

[1346] They say yes?

[1347] Yes.

[1348] Oh, that's encouraging.

[1349] Right.

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] Now, here's another key thing.

[1352] The response to no is really critical.

[1353] So a man's response to no, I'm not in the mood, I don't want sex, is critical to determine how much sex they'll have.

[1354] If his response is punishing in any way, they'll stop having sex.

[1355] But if he says, well, thank you for telling me that you're not in the mood.

[1356] What are you in the mood for?

[1357] I want to take a walk.

[1358] want to make some popcorn, watch a movie, you know, it doesn't end, no doesn't end connection for him.

[1359] Right.

[1360] Then no is not punishing.

[1361] Mm -hmm.

[1362] So it's just true.

[1363] Third fact, women have more requirements for sex than men do.

[1364] Meaning for it to be pleasurable?

[1365] Well, Billy Crystal said it this way.

[1366] A woman needs a reason for sex.

[1367] A man just needs a place.

[1368] Right, right, right.

[1369] Yeah.

[1370] You know, so, but, and there's good reason that women have more requirements, and, and that has to do with a woman's relationship with fear.

[1371] Ooh, tell me more about that.

[1372] The world is so much more dangerous place for women than it is for men.

[1373] Uh -huh.

[1374] I mean, really, life -threateningly dangerous.

[1375] Sure.

[1376] You know, it's the kind of thing where, you know, a woman walking across a parking lot at night to go to a class.

[1377] You know, she locks a car and she just has to walk to the class.

[1378] A guy doing the same thing, you know, would think, well, you know, I'm going to the class.

[1379] A woman would really be thinking, I could get raped and killed on the way.

[1380] Monica talks about this all the time.

[1381] She puts her keys in her knuckles in case she's got to, like, puncture someone's eye out.

[1382] And everyone I know does all the girls, yeah.

[1383] So 40 % of women in their lifetime will have a physical encounter with the perpetrator.

[1384] that's life -threatening, 40 % of women.

[1385] That's crazy.

[1386] The equivalent is 7 % for men.

[1387] So women have a special relationship with emotion.

[1388] Although I just want to add on to that.

[1389] 50 % of all boys are physically abused in their childhood.

[1390] So I think that number's got to be in adulthood because we are beating the shit out of young boys.

[1391] Oh, okay.

[1392] Well, that's something I'm terrible.

[1393] Anywho.

[1394] There's a great documentary out right now, the mask you live in.

[1395] We talk about it all the time.

[1396] It's about how we raise boys and girls.

[1397] It's incredible.

[1398] I'll have to watch that.

[1399] I haven't seen that.

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] We're all victims of men.

[1402] It's terrible.

[1403] Well, that's a good point.

[1404] So, you know, so women need to feel safe.

[1405] And they need to feel connected to feel safe, emotionally connected to their partners, to feel that sense of security and safety.

[1406] And they need to feel like there's not, you know, items on the to do list that need to get done, that they're responsible.

[1407] for.

[1408] That's why, you know, guys who help with housework have more sex and guys who don't.

[1409] Okay.

[1410] You know?

[1411] You hear that guys pick up a fucking sponge and get ready.

[1412] So I, you know, so I think it's really about fear.

[1413] And women are easier to fear condition than men.

[1414] So if you, you know, if you just pair, you know, some random thing, you know, like a rabbit's fur with an electric shock and, you know, build a fear to this, you know, innocuous stimulus, right?

[1415] women get conditioned to that fear much more quickly than the men do.

[1416] Oh, they do.

[1417] Yeah.

[1418] So it's, I think a lot of it has to do with safety and connection.

[1419] Yeah.

[1420] That, you know, give women more requirements for sex than men.

[1421] Well, I think it's really, I think people underestimate how hard it is to keep the sex life thriving.

[1422] And my theory on why that is, is it's, it is really our single most vulnerable fear we have, is that we would not be enough for.

[1423] our partner physically sexually it's such a for a man to say like you know well why don't you desire me is so crippling that no guy's going to do that or vice versa it's just it's to me it seems to be the fear that is just the hardest for us to confront right right and to be and to walk the line between vulnerability and neediness which is a total bone kill you know no one wants their partner to be needy it's not attractive yet vulnerability is very attractive so but it's a very fine line between those things right yeah um anyways i just think uh you know it's it's um i'm very sympathetic to people who have a hard time talking about that subject and being honest about it well you know helen fisher has done some really interesting work um you know putting people in a functional MRI tube and having them look at a picture of a stranger versus the person they say that they're in love with.

[1424] Not just that they love, but in love with.

[1425] Okay.

[1426] And it turns out that there's no shelf life for staying in love.

[1427] You can be in love with your partner for 35 years.

[1428] You still have that same brain response to seeing that picture.

[1429] So sex can be kept alive and romance can be kept alive.

[1430] for a lifetime, if emotional connection is valued in the relationship, if there's respect and affection.

[1431] And these 12 things that people do everywhere on the planet, it's the same...

[1432] What's the name of that book?

[1433] I want people to read it.

[1434] It's called the Normal Bar.

[1435] The Normal Bar.

[1436] Which is a terrible name because it, you know, it seems like it's about a pub.

[1437] A saloon, yeah.

[1438] Where nothing that exciting happens.

[1439] Yeah, right.

[1440] But it's a great book because, you know, it really highlights.

[1441] It's how important these simple things are like taking your partner's hand in public, you know, or giving your partner a kiss or, you know, there's a wonderful book called.

[1442] Well, what it says is you're proud of me. Yeah, that's right.

[1443] You're proud to be seen with me. You're proud to be connected to me. That's flattering.

[1444] There's a book called The Science of Kissing that reviews a study done in Germany that says that men who kiss their wives goodbye when they go to work live five years longer than men who don't.

[1445] Oh, my goodness.

[1446] So kissing is really, you know, a powerful way to maintain erotic connection.

[1447] I think it's so cute that us humans kiss.

[1448] Like when I watch all these animal documentaries and none of the other animals are really kissing, I think, oh, it's so sweet that we do that.

[1449] It's so silly.

[1450] Let's just touch our mouse together.

[1451] So tell me about your new book.

[1452] The new book is called Eight Dates.

[1453] Yes.

[1454] Central Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.

[1455] So, you know, Julie and I wrote this book with two, you know, very good.

[1456] close friends of ours, Doug Abrams and Rachel Carlton Abrams, and she's a physician, and, you know, he's just a great writer.

[1457] And the four of us just get along so well.

[1458] And we wanted to really deal with the fact that in a lot of relationships, people become like two railroad tracks in parallel.

[1459] They just live like roommates.

[1460] They just don't maintain their intimacy.

[1461] Yeah.

[1462] That seems like one of the easiest patterns to fall into, especially if you're raising kids, That's right.

[1463] Yeah, we're all worth this team now who's got to get these kids.

[1464] Well, I'll tell you about a story.

[1465] There was a study done in Los Angeles of dual career couples where they put microphones and cameras in their home, and they found that they were in the same room in an evening 10 % of the time.

[1466] And they talked to each other an average of 35 minutes a week.

[1467] And all that conversation was about errands.

[1468] Logistics.

[1469] Logistics.

[1470] They didn't date.

[1471] They didn't do the stuff that, you know, the normal bar found that people everywhere on the planet do when they have a good sex life, like have dates.

[1472] Yeah.

[1473] And so curiosity dies.

[1474] Uh -huh.

[1475] And what we want to do is write a book that set fire to curiosity.

[1476] Ooh.

[1477] Where they could keep having dates.

[1478] So we designed these questions and we had 300 couples go out on these dates, gay, lesbian couples, new relationships.

[1479] You know, we had 37 % of our couples were a new relationship.

[1480] relationships.

[1481] Sixty -three percent were in longer -term relationships.

[1482] And we designed these questions to go very deep so that curiosity gets fired up.

[1483] Yeah, because it's quite easy to think you know your partner inside now.

[1484] There's only nothing left to discover.

[1485] I feel that way at times.

[1486] I'm like, yeah, I get it.

[1487] I feel like I could predict what she's going to do, good 80 % inaccuracy.

[1488] You know, the questions we thought in these eight dates were, would plant the seed that would build after the date.

[1489] So, for example, our date on trust and commitment start off really asking the questions, tell me about your parents.

[1490] How did they show one another that they were trustworthy or failed to do that?

[1491] How did they show one another they were really committed to one another or failed to do that?

[1492] And, you know, once they talk about that, well, what is it like in our relationship?

[1493] You know, what, you know, what do you feel?

[1494] What do you need?

[1495] What's been our history?

[1496] And so that turned out to be a really powerful date emotionally.

[1497] Yeah, I'm scared to ask those questions because I might find out I've got a lot of work to do.

[1498] Well, you know, that's what makes it so exciting, you know.

[1499] Yeah.

[1500] And, you know, and you'll be surprised at some of the answers.

[1501] And it's literally, you're to go on eight dates.

[1502] Right.

[1503] Each date has a different kind of topic that you...

[1504] Right.

[1505] And it's not confrontational.

[1506] It's really about being curious about your partner.

[1507] How does your partner think?

[1508] Like, for example, you talk about money and work.

[1509] So what was the history in your family with money?

[1510] What did your father and mother feel about money?

[1511] How did your dad feel about money?

[1512] And what was his history with work?

[1513] We worshiped it.

[1514] I don't know how it was in your house.

[1515] Right.

[1516] So you have all kinds of, so there's a story around money.

[1517] So all the conflicts people have about money are all about the meaning of money, really, not about money itself.

[1518] Like what they've attached to this concept.

[1519] That's what I was going to ask you about.

[1520] Is money the number one thing couples fight about?

[1521] It seems to be the number one thing that leads to divorce and fights.

[1522] Oh, really?

[1523] That's what has been determined by sociologists.

[1524] Now, this is one of the greatest gifts.

[1525] I feel like one of the only gifts money really gives you is that my wife and I don't fight about money.

[1526] She makes a bunch of it and I make a good enough amount of it and we don't fight about it.

[1527] And that's huge.

[1528] Okay.

[1529] So, but even when I was dead broke with the girl for nine years, we didn't fight about money either.

[1530] So when people fight about money, what are they fighting about, how to allocate it, what they're saving for, who's going to make more?

[1531] Why doesn't someone?

[1532] What are they fighting about?

[1533] But usually they're fighting about something so stupid and trivial.

[1534] Like you spent how much on that sweater?

[1535] You know, you don't need a, you have so many sweaters.

[1536] What do you need a fucking sweater for, you know?

[1537] Yeah.

[1538] And they get really upset about it.

[1539] Yeah.

[1540] But if you get down to all these conflicts, and I studied 900 conflicts about money, and I stopped at 100 meanings of money, and money can mean power and competence and justice and love and caring and all these different things that when people get down to, well, what's it for?

[1541] So there's always, there are always stories around these things about, now here's an interesting thing.

[1542] So, I just analyzed data from 40 ,000 couples that were starting couples therapy.

[1543] 80 % of them said they were not having any fun anymore.

[1544] There was no play, fun, or adventure in their lives anymore.

[1545] Yeah.

[1546] I thought that was so sad.

[1547] Yeah.

[1548] So one of our dates is really about adventure, play and fun.

[1549] So you can say, so what's it been like for you?

[1550] I mean, what is it, you know, what's made, what?

[1551] What's made you happy when you have adventures?

[1552] What adventures do you want to have?

[1553] What's it been like in your family?

[1554] Do you come from an adventurous family or, you know, what's that about?

[1555] How do you play?

[1556] How did you play as a kid?

[1557] How do you play with your dad or your mom?

[1558] And, you know, what's play been like for us?

[1559] You know, what's fun, you know.

[1560] So here, again, we're, you know, we're firing up curiosity.

[1561] And here's a topic that I couldn't believe it, 80 % of couples coming in to couples therapy, you know, sure, sex is a problem for almost all of them.

[1562] Yeah.

[1563] But play and fun is more of a problem than sexes.

[1564] Well, again, sex is often the outcome of play and fun, right?

[1565] Right.

[1566] You're big into, it's not just about how couples fight.

[1567] You're concerned about that.

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] But you're concerned also about how couples make up.

[1570] Right.

[1571] It's very important, I think, to, you know, maintain friendship, a relationship.

[1572] Very important to really feel like your partner is on your side.

[1573] You partner is your ally.

[1574] Your partner is your best friend.

[1575] And your partner respects you and values you and cherishes you.

[1576] And maintaining friendship and intimacy is just as important as dealing with conflict.

[1577] Yeah, you know, we read something very helpful not too long ago that kids always witness their parents fight.

[1578] But generally, the makeup's behind closed doors.

[1579] And so they don't ever gather the tools to make up because you hide that from them.

[1580] And we're not great at it, but we do occasionally force ourselves to make up in front of the kids, which is awkward for everyone, but fuck it, we do it, you know.

[1581] Well, there's a good research that supports that.

[1582] A guy named Mark Cummings at Notre Dame has found that when your kids are young, you need to make up physically.

[1583] If they've witnessed the fight, you need to physically hug and kiss one another for them to feel, Because it's so simple, yeah.

[1584] Otherwise, the blood pressure stays high.

[1585] Oh, interesting.

[1586] Let me tell you one story.

[1587] So you can measure a couple's marital happiness by asking them questions, or you can take a 24 -hour urine sample of their children and measure stress hormones in the urine.

[1588] Oh, my goodness.

[1589] So they pick up on unhappiness between the parents so that making up physically that Mark Cummings found was so important for kids is really critical.

[1590] Right.

[1591] That makes me so sad that the little people have it in their urine.

[1592] In all of this exploration into marriage and what makes them succeed and fail, have you ever asked yourself the global question?

[1593] Is this even natural?

[1594] Is this, do we believe this is how this species should be living?

[1595] Do you even ask yourself that?

[1596] Do you care?

[1597] Yeah, I do.

[1598] And, you know, one of the things that is very exciting about this field of research, which really began, you know, about 50 years ago when psychologists got involved in studying relationships, is that another field developed as at the same time a field called social epidemiology.

[1599] Really interesting field because what they found was they were looking at what predicts how long somebody is going to live and how healthy they'll be.

[1600] Is it diet?

[1601] Is it exercise?

[1602] Is it cholesterol?

[1603] You know, what is it?

[1604] How do you stay healthy and happy and have well -being and live a long time?

[1605] And a guy named Leonard Seim started this research with a student, Lisa Berkman.

[1606] It was at Berkeley that they began.

[1607] And Len Seim was very interested in diet.

[1608] And he was noticing that Chinese immigrants to this country live longer than European immigrants.

[1609] And he thought, well, maybe it's because they cook in a wok and they eat this healthy vegetables and stuff like that.

[1610] So he started off on really looking at serum cholesterol and diet.

[1611] And they did a classic study called the Alameda County study where they studied people for nine years.

[1612] And what predicted longevity was the quality of people's closest relationships.

[1613] It wasn't food, it wasn't diet, it wasn't cholesterol.

[1614] And that has been replicated over and over again so that what predicts how long you're going to live, how healthy you'll be, how quickly you recover from illness when you get sick and how wealthy you'll be and how well your kids do in life and even in middle age how healthy they will be when they start, you know, when their bodies start winding down, it's all about the quality of your closest relationships.

[1615] Well, I think we really underestimate how social of an animal we are.

[1616] That's right.

[1617] This notion of being a hermit just is not how we're designed to be.

[1618] Yeah.

[1619] So if you can have a love relationship that lasts a lifetime, then you're going to live 15 years longer.

[1620] People can't do that.

[1621] So I think it's natural.

[1622] Okay.

[1623] What are your thoughts about open relationships?

[1624] You know, there hasn't been very much research done on them.

[1625] There hasn't.

[1626] You know, McWhorter and Madison did a classic study of gay male relationships.

[1627] And this is before AIDS, so before the 80s.

[1628] And they found that there were no gay male relationships.

[1629] that it lasted 35 years longer that weren't open relationships.

[1630] Now, they hadn't studied, of course, the relationship that dissolved, you know, and that struggled with having open relationships.

[1631] But that was a very interesting finding.

[1632] And so, you know, there's something to it.

[1633] Well, several of my friends in the gay community here, males, not females, but have said to me that it's far more standard in the long term.

[1634] gay male relationship to have some kind of openness.

[1635] And I don't know if that's just testosterone squared or what else is happening there.

[1636] I think it is.

[1637] And, you know, there are 45 % of male relationships now post -aids are monogamous.

[1638] And it's much higher among lesbian couples.

[1639] Right.

[1640] And in between for heterosexual couples.

[1641] Have you ever heard this great joke?

[1642] What do lesbians bring on a second date?

[1643] The moving van.

[1644] A you all, yeah.

[1645] And then what a gay men bring on a second date?

[1646] What?

[1647] What second date?

[1648] That's a good old joke.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] So, you know, there hasn't been much research on open relationships, polyamory, things like that.

[1651] For one thing, it's so many different things, open relationships.

[1652] Yeah.

[1653] You know, so have so many different forms.

[1654] There's also different, so I was the one for my nine -year relationship was an open relationship.

[1655] And then again, we had parameters that maybe other people didn't have, which is like I had no interest in never knowing if anything happened, nor did she.

[1656] that's maybe a difference that some people had.

[1657] That's unusual.

[1658] Yeah, you'd have to, I guess, you'd have to have all these sub brackets of who you were studying.

[1659] Like, what version of it is?

[1660] We slept at home together every single night for nine years.

[1661] Oh, okay.

[1662] All right.

[1663] And my...

[1664] Swingers like to watch their partners having sex with people.

[1665] Yeah, can't relate to it, but that's fascinating.

[1666] Right.

[1667] Yeah.

[1668] You know, and then one common form of polyamory is a couple in their 40s, intersexual couple in their 40s finds a woman in her at 20s that they both have sex with.

[1669] Okay.

[1670] And usually one of them falls in love with her more and it breaks up the relationship.

[1671] That's a common form.

[1672] Now, I've read 15 books now on polyamory.

[1673] Oh, you have?

[1674] Yeah, I mean, I'm curious about it.

[1675] People always ask about it.

[1676] So my conclusion, after all of it, was I don't think it impacted, I felt very loved by her.

[1677] I never ever felt second to anything.

[1678] It was a beautiful, wonderful relationship.

[1679] But because maintaining a sex life is so challenging and requires so much vulnerability, if you have an option to have sex without all that hard work, I think for, at least for us, it was detrimental to our own sex life.

[1680] I see.

[1681] So again, now, if I was older, could we have navigated that?

[1682] Maybe, I'm not sure, but it's just interesting to me because I did it and I was very happy and love.

[1683] But the sex life did, I think, take a pretty big hit because of how much easier it is to just be satiated without all the vulnerability.

[1684] Yeah, and all the love work.

[1685] Yes.

[1686] Right.

[1687] The heavy lifting.

[1688] Well, the other thing I think is that a lot of gay couples and polyamorous couples have this rule that you can have sex but don't fall in love.

[1689] Right.

[1690] Don't have strong emotional attachment.

[1691] And that's hard to do because we secrete oxytocin after every orgasm.

[1692] Yeah, you get the love hormone.

[1693] You get the love hormone, the cuddle hormone.

[1694] More in women than men, though, right?

[1695] No. I mean, well, men secrete vasopressin as well as oxytocin.

[1696] Isn't that the one time to get the fuck out of there?

[1697] No. Bezopressin is the possessive part of attachment, right?

[1698] It's like, you know, warding off rivals.

[1699] You're mine.

[1700] Right.

[1701] So men get this.

[1702] You're mine when they have an orgasm with a woman.

[1703] No, I don't like that.

[1704] Or another man, you know.

[1705] So that's vasopressin.

[1706] Women don't have vasopressin.

[1707] Well, there's also, when we think about monogamy and marriage, there's this really fascinating data that's coming out of New York City, right?

[1708] That the women are getting married far less than they were in the 70s and 80s.

[1709] And the explanation I'm hearing is that they don't need men anymore.

[1710] Like there was a period where if you wanted to live in that city and eat, you needed a man in your life.

[1711] And now you don't need that.

[1712] And when they don't need men, it's seeming like...

[1713] Economically that.

[1714] don't need men.

[1715] Economically, they don't need men.

[1716] And when they don't, we're seeing much higher numbers, choose not to have that male commitment.

[1717] And I'm just curious, I'm not ready to say that's right or wrong or good or bad or anything.

[1718] It's just something interesting to think about.

[1719] Yeah, and I think probably the inducement to marry would be, you know, much more intimate, much more about, well, you know, he actually is, helps me fulfill my dreams.

[1720] He actually is on my side.

[1721] that's a kind of a beautiful takeaway, is that presumably the marriages that are happening now are really happening for the nicest reasons.

[1722] Right.

[1723] Right.

[1724] Yeah.

[1725] So maybe it's a positive statistic.

[1726] Um, Monica, do you have any questions for the good doctor?

[1727] I feel like you hit them all.

[1728] Really?

[1729] Yeah, I'm pretty proud.

[1730] Okay.

[1731] Impressed.

[1732] Oh, I did have one question because I think in blink, one of the facial expressions that you cited as contemptuous was eye rolling, right?

[1733] Oh, yes.

[1734] That's right.

[1735] And I do that all the time.

[1736] It's a tick.

[1737] It's just a tick.

[1738] And I think about that all the time now because I'm like, oh, no, am I doing that or am I feeling that?

[1739] Am I giving that off?

[1740] I don't know.

[1741] I mean, there are, you know, there are facial expressions that are habits.

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] And even in certain families.

[1744] Right.

[1745] You know, there are, and Paul Leckman's written about this, that there are certain facial expressions that are underliners.

[1746] You know, they serve to underline something.

[1747] Emphasis.

[1748] And, you know, so, you know, some people wrinkle their nose.

[1749] It's kind of a disgust facial expression, but it's really to emphasize something, to underline it.

[1750] So an eye role could be that.

[1751] And, you know, and in families, you know, people do things like, you know, they wrinkle their brow in a certain way, they knit their brow in a certain way, to communicate.

[1752] They really mean it, or it's really serious or something like that.

[1753] And usually those kinds of facial expressions get held for longer than a natural.

[1754] facial expression.

[1755] Oh, interesting.

[1756] So the eye roll, I'd have to see it.

[1757] Sure, I've done it six or seven times with that even.

[1758] Yeah, it could be slower, could be slower, more meaningful.

[1759] And then it can have a different interpretation, right?

[1760] It's really an emphasis, it's emphasizing something.

[1761] Right.

[1762] Underlying.

[1763] I guess it also would require just communication, because if a partner saw it and took it in as something negative, it might just require like, oh, I just do that.

[1764] And it doesn't, and it's a, it's a habit.

[1765] Well, it's usually accompanied by the left lip corner being pulled laterally and creating a dimple on the left side.

[1766] So that accompanies the eye roll usually.

[1767] And that's the universal facial expression for contempt.

[1768] I'm going to have to look for that the next time you roll your eyes at me. uses the muscle called buxinator.

[1769] Oh.

[1770] Buxinator.

[1771] Yeah.

[1772] Okay, you're probably going to be the only person I feel like I could get away with asking this.

[1773] question too.

[1774] All right.

[1775] You're both Jewish and you're a doctor that studies marriage.

[1776] Where I grew up, one of the stereotypes about Jewish men was that they make the best husbands.

[1777] Have you ever heard this stereotype?

[1778] Yeah, I've heard it.

[1779] What do you think that's rooted in?

[1780] A, is there any data to support that?

[1781] Do Jewish men get divorced at a lower rate than Gentiles?

[1782] I don't think there's any data that support it at all.

[1783] Okay.

[1784] It's just a fun night.

[1785] Sometimes, Monica and I argue all the time, I say, sometimes.

[1786] stereotypes are really flattering, like Jewish men make great husbands.

[1787] Who would not want to hear that?

[1788] I think it's because Jewish women are strong.

[1789] It's a value in the culture for women to be strong.

[1790] And it really goes back to Moses.

[1791] When the women approached Moses and said, you know, you're giving away the land, you're apportioning the land.

[1792] What about us?

[1793] We've lost our husbands in war.

[1794] What land do we get?

[1795] We're widows.

[1796] And Moses said, they're right.

[1797] You know, And, you know, he yielded to them.

[1798] So there's a tradition that women who stand up for themselves are sexier.

[1799] Uh -huh.

[1800] They're more valued.

[1801] So we like strong women, I think.

[1802] Right.

[1803] So we grew up with strong mothers.

[1804] Uh -huh.

[1805] You know, my mother was a very strong woman.

[1806] I married my mom.

[1807] Did you marry yours?

[1808] In some ways, I think, in some ways, I mean, she has the annoying quality of being right most of the time.

[1809] Uh -huh.

[1810] Sure.

[1811] I always think you kind of hit the lottery because if there's any truth of the fact that you do want to marry your mother, I happen to be blessed with the greatest mother ever to live.

[1812] So I got lucky in that the person I was trying to replicate was like a great role model for that.

[1813] But if you don't hit the lottery and you're trying to, what feels familiar is a lot of dominance and critique, then you know, you're kind of screwed, I guess.

[1814] Yeah, but, you know, on the contrary, you know, there's always a counter example, right?

[1815] In the Orthodox Jewish community, women are really, you know, subjugated.

[1816] Yeah, I just recently watched a documentary on the Hesedom, and that's a rough existence for females.

[1817] Yeah, I think I've seen the same one, yeah, and it's very sad.

[1818] But it's not mainstream Jewish.

[1819] Right, right.

[1820] Well, Dr. Gottman, it's been so fun to talk to you.

[1821] Again, I don't know that I've referenced somebody's work more and gotten it more wrong, but still, reference it all.

[1822] Well, I thought he worked at Stanford.

[1823] I've said that in the past.

[1824] I always get the percentages wrong when I say, how would he can predict.

[1825] But I have the gist, I think.

[1826] And I sincerely thank you because I doubt in your mind you would ever consider the fact that I 11 years ago read about your work and I made a conscious effort to avoid these four horsemen.

[1827] That's great.

[1828] And I really am active in doing that, and so was Kristen.

[1829] And so, you know, I'm not saying we wouldn't still be here, but I can promise you it's made a huge difference.

[1830] Well, you have good intuition, too, I think.

[1831] Well, it's that mom of mine.

[1832] Yeah, I have a photograph.

[1833] We have this wall of ancestors in our house and, you know, photographs.

[1834] And I have a photograph that I treasure, which is a picture of my mom and I, you know, I remember she kind of said, we're going into this room, and it was a photographer.

[1835] For some reason, she wanted to go into a professional photographer.

[1836] She had this picture taken.

[1837] The photographer wanted me to hold a stuffed animal, which I wasn't interested in doing, you know, at the time.

[1838] But, you know, it's this picture of me sitting with my mom, and we both look so relaxed in each other's company, and I look so confident, you know, being with her.

[1839] I just love that picture.

[1840] Yeah.

[1841] So I haven't had a good mom is really a wonderful thing.

[1842] Well, good luck to you and everything.

[1843] I hope the book does exceptional.

[1844] You know, good luck and continue on your good work.

[1845] Thank you.

[1846] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1847] I know I generally sing songs about facts, but I want to sing a song about Monica.

[1848] Okay.

[1849] Monica.

[1850] Monica, Monica.

[1851] Are there any famous Monica songs?

[1852] No, it's not a good enough name for that.

[1853] Most songs with names.

[1854] The Kinks have a song about Monica, called Monica.

[1855] Oh.

[1856] How does it go?

[1857] I'll play it.

[1858] Is it in English?

[1859] Oh, yeah.

[1860] You know Kinks, Lola.

[1861] Yeah, I do.

[1862] Oh, my God, he only said Monica Padman.

[1863] Monica Padman Oh, Monica Nose every line This song's actually written about you Monica knows every line Oh wow Monarchy knows every line Yeah That was exciting It was But I think I'm going to go to the drawing board As they say Great And I'm going to start playing With some songs And your name Thank you.

[1864] Yeah.

[1865] That'll make me feel weird and good.

[1866] You know, we just got back from San Antonio.

[1867] We had so much fun there.

[1868] Deep in the heart of Texas.

[1869] And Michael Rosenbaum was our guest.

[1870] Yeah.

[1871] But he was hysterical.

[1872] Very fun.

[1873] And something that he does that you appreciate greatly.

[1874] Oh, boy, yeah.

[1875] Is he does many impressions.

[1876] He is a master of impression.

[1877] He's a master impressions.

[1878] An expert.

[1879] We could have him on as experts.

[1880] Just an impression expert.

[1881] Yeah.

[1882] You know why that would suck as an expert on experts is no one could explain how they do.

[1883] Like mimics, I don't, there's no like advisable technique to get any of us to be able to do that.

[1884] Well, he told us what sort of drove him there.

[1885] The route.

[1886] Yeah.

[1887] But he, yeah, how to do it.

[1888] But maybe the whole episode could just be him going through all of his impressions seamlessly.

[1889] He could do everything.

[1890] Everyone.

[1891] It was crazy.

[1892] Darns near as everyone.

[1893] But what you really appreciated about it is he doesn't look at you when he does the person.

[1894] I was so grateful.

[1895] That's when you know you're a real impressionist.

[1896] Oh.

[1897] Is that the right?

[1898] Is that what it's called?

[1899] All I heard was a dig on me. Do you think you are one?

[1900] An impressionist?

[1901] Do I think I'm an impressionist?

[1902] Yeah.

[1903] Would you classify yourself as that?

[1904] No, but I think I do 20 or so impressions pretty pretty decent.

[1905] I feel like you've said out loud like, I don't like do it.

[1906] impressions.

[1907] Well, in that, that's not, no, that my comedy generally is wordplay.

[1908] Exactly.

[1909] Yeah.

[1910] That's not like the type of comedy you take pride in.

[1911] That's right.

[1912] But, and yet I also do some impersonations.

[1913] You do.

[1914] You do some wonderful ones.

[1915] And then when I do that, I stare into your soul.

[1916] Yes.

[1917] But old Rosie, Rosenpienus, he, he throws it out to the crowd, I guess.

[1918] Just doesn't look at your face he finds a neutral zone yeah it's pretty nice now do i do it because i'm i want to interact with you or this would be the worst case scenario i'm wanting to um enjoy your reaction of liking it that would be the worst that would be bad i don't think that's what it is i don't either but i do think it's probably monitoring your reaction to know if i should knock it off i think that's what it is actually now that i are you sure because i think if that were true you'd stop.

[1919] Immediately.

[1920] You'd stop quickly.

[1921] Instead, you keep going and go.

[1922] Well, there is a period where I think I can win you over and then I throw in the towel.

[1923] I think it's because that's just where, like, you decided to focus.

[1924] Like, because I do think it requires, like, some, you have to, like, get into a zone and you have to focus.

[1925] And I think that's just what you're doing.

[1926] You have to leave your identity and kind of join someone else's.

[1927] And maybe you're just someone I don't recognize.

[1928] There's, like, a new person.

[1929] Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.

[1930] Oh my God, who is this?

[1931] Right.

[1932] I'm going to hold a piece of paper in front of my face.

[1933] Oh, I hear a voice.

[1934] This is tremendous.

[1935] I can still see, I could still see half of an eye and it was.

[1936] I hold it vertically now.

[1937] I'm, you're allowed to look at my face when you do stuff.

[1938] Okay, thanks.

[1939] You're allowed to.

[1940] Also, it would have been extra weird because I didn't really know him well.

[1941] You're right.

[1942] That was your first time meeting in real life, yeah.

[1943] I think we've met like one one other time quickly.

[1944] But yes, spending real time.

[1945] Yeah, yeah, yeah, quickly in my bed.

[1946] But anyway, so if you don't know someone and they're staring into your eyes and doing an impression, that would be excruciating.

[1947] What if it was like Jim Carrey?

[1948] Even still.

[1949] Still.

[1950] Okay, no one, no one is too good.

[1951] No one is too good to not look away.

[1952] Okay, great.

[1953] But, you know, Rosenbaum told us a scary story.

[1954] Well, I'm going to say it, not exactly.

[1955] He loves a horror movies.

[1956] He explained a movie to you, which didn't happen.

[1957] But he did it with, like, impressions.

[1958] So it was like he was telling a scary story.

[1959] And he, well, what he did was he was telling us the first.

[1960] seen in the last scene of the original one A Stranger Calls.

[1961] Right, right.

[1962] And it was very spooky.

[1963] And, you know, he not only was imitating, of course, all the characters in the movie, but his beats and his timing were very horrid.

[1964] They were.

[1965] He took his sweet -ass time.

[1966] I know.

[1967] That's what I mean.

[1968] I would have probably been nervous.

[1969] I lost you and started speeding through it, and then it would have lost all of its impact.

[1970] No. You wouldn't have been scared.

[1971] You would have, of course, again, been uncomfortable.

[1972] It had a lot of suspense and pop -outs.

[1973] I knew that I was actually scared, and that I was going to be scared for a little while about it.

[1974] And then the next day, I was still thinking about it.

[1975] You were?

[1976] Yeah.

[1977] And I was thinking, like, in my brain, what is that?

[1978] Like, why does that have such a resonance?

[1979] This is what I ask you all the time when you get scared.

[1980] Because numerous times you've watched something at our house and then you go home and you're quite nervous to go home.

[1981] Yeah.

[1982] And I try to get into your head and I'm like, but you know it's a movie.

[1983] How do you convince yourself it's not a movie?

[1984] I don't even know how I could.

[1985] Right.

[1986] I have a theory now.

[1987] Oh, great.

[1988] So, yeah, when we're watching, when I'm watching a scary movie, I like, I really feel like I'm in that scenario.

[1989] It does not feel like there's a barrier.

[1990] Like, it feels like me who is experiencing this.

[1991] Uh -huh.

[1992] And my mirror neurons are firing, like, crazy.

[1993] Pop, pop, pop, pop.

[1994] Yes, they're pop -rocking.

[1995] Uh -huh.

[1996] And pop -locking.

[1997] And I think it's because I live with some amount of fear.

[1998] in my life always.

[1999] So when something fearful is happening, my response is a quick...

[2000] You're always one stop away from feeling scared, just naturally.

[2001] Yes, exactly.

[2002] Like, my body recognizes the feeling of being scared quickly.

[2003] Uh -huh.

[2004] So then when I watch these movies, I feel that.

[2005] And I wonder if there's like a study, I want to look into it, about men and women and the enjoyment of horror movies.

[2006] Oh, yeah.

[2007] Anecdotally, I feel like women like them more than men.

[2008] Oh, really?

[2009] Yeah.

[2010] Okay, I was going to say the opposite.

[2011] Well, because I think they're more impactful.

[2012] I know, but then they're also, like, extra scared.

[2013] Yeah.

[2014] So, I don't know.

[2015] I don't even know if I stand by what I just said.

[2016] I don't know.

[2017] I mean, I'll have to look.

[2018] Maybe I was just thinking of Twilight.

[2019] Twilight is not a horror movie.

[2020] A lot of women liked Twilight.

[2021] I think a lot of women liked the boys in that movie.

[2022] Yeah, Taylor Lawner.

[2023] And Sophia Copeland.

[2024] No, not at all.

[2025] What's that guy's name?

[2026] Robert Patton.

[2027] Thank you.

[2028] Robert Patton.

[2029] Oh, of course Wobby Wob would know because it's a fellow Wobber.

[2030] Wobby.

[2031] It's another Wobbert.

[2032] Robert Watterson.

[2033] Yeah.

[2034] Yeah, so I'm just curious, like, if women don't like horror movies as much because women have more Well, here's what I do know.

[2035] Women consume those murder mystery shows way more than men.

[2036] I do know the demographics on those shows, like your date lines and your 2020s where there's an abduction.

[2037] Those in Lifetime, that is a highly female demographic.

[2038] That's true.

[2039] Well, Lifetime, I don't think, because of horror.

[2040] Lifetime's like romance and stuff.

[2041] No, well, Lifetime did our escaping R. Kelly.

[2042] It's like playing a horror movie.

[2043] No, no, but nor is it romantic.

[2044] You just said it's all about.

[2045] romance right and if you think that was romantic then it used to be lifetime used to be like equivalent to a romance novel oh yeah and i think at some point a decade ago they realize women like to get the shit scared out of them because there's always even the movie of the week you know that their lifetime producing it was always like a husband that was being the shit out of somebody there was there was always some general threat you know some kind of really relatable female concern yeah I guess.

[2046] It's not like I'm that familiar with the programming of Lifetime, but I do know that Lifetime does have a bunch of those kind of murdering mystery deals.

[2047] All right.

[2048] Okay.

[2049] Anywho.

[2050] Anywho.

[2051] Who are we even talking about today?

[2052] Michael Rosenbaum.

[2053] We're talking about John Gottman.

[2054] Well, we owe it to John Gottman on Rosenbaum's fact check to really get into his stuff.

[2055] Well, we're going to.

[2056] Don't worry.

[2057] Are you okay?

[2058] All right.

[2059] You're all right.

[2060] Well, it was exciting to have him.

[2061] You talk about him all the time.

[2062] You know what's so funny is I do.

[2063] I think I probably have referenced that person more than any other person.

[2064] Yet, for whatever reason, I had never even known his name.

[2065] Like, just what he discovered was so compelling to me that I remembered the details.

[2066] But I hadn't seen his name in print since I read blank nine years ago.

[2067] 182 years ago.

[2068] Yes.

[2069] Yes.

[2070] And so I even think it was you who said we should have John Gottman on.

[2071] And I was like, who the fuck is John Gottman?

[2072] Yeah.

[2073] And I was like, oh, my God, how embarrassing.

[2074] I've been quoting John Gottman for nine years.

[2075] Yeah.

[2076] So it was exciting.

[2077] And he was really cute when he arrived because he had like a leather jacket on and stuff.

[2078] Didn't you think that was cute?

[2079] Yeah.

[2080] He was great.

[2081] Oh, fantastic.

[2082] Yeah.

[2083] Because he's not a, he's not a young man. No, but he was brightly.

[2084] Oh, yeah, for sure.

[2085] Yeah.

[2086] But I guess, and I don't say that in an ageist way, I say like, when I'm over 75, the notion of having to travel somewhere to do anything work -related sounds a little daunting to me. So I guess I'm just, I'm really impressed when old folks are still in the mix.

[2087] Me too.

[2088] Yeah.

[2089] I agree.

[2090] We appreciate it, Gottman.

[2091] Yeah.

[2092] Gottman Turner Overdrive.

[2093] Do you know that band?

[2094] No. Bachman Turner Overdrive, a big 70s band.

[2095] No, no. Did you understand earlier that I was talking about Blink 182?

[2096] Nope.

[2097] When did that happen?

[2098] Yeah.

[2099] What happened?

[2100] Rob didn't get it either.

[2101] You said Blank.

[2102] Oh, right.

[2103] And then I said...

[2104] Oh, 182 years ago.

[2105] No, I didn't...

[2106] That was a good riddle.

[2107] Thanks.

[2108] And I failed it.

[2109] I did like a couple Blink 182 songs.

[2110] Which ones?

[2111] That one that was like...

[2112] I'm feeling it.

[2113] Feeling it.

[2114] Oh, right.

[2115] Right, right, right.

[2116] If my memory serves me, someone's excited to have some sex.

[2117] Is that in that what the song is about?

[2118] Oh, sure.

[2119] I want to be, I'm feeling it.

[2120] Oh, God, I wish I could remember more of those words other than feeling it.

[2121] Did Blink 182 sing All -Star?

[2122] No. A smash mouth.

[2123] Oh, I liked All -Star.

[2124] Wobb knows his music.

[2125] Wobby's our resident musical expert.

[2126] Totally.

[2127] I really like the drummer, Travis, from Blink 182.

[2128] Oh, yeah.

[2129] Primarily because he had a big, sweet tattoo of a Cadillac symbol on his chest, which I thought was pretty titties.

[2130] Did you want to get one?

[2131] Yeah, yeah.

[2132] Yeah, yeah.

[2133] I did.

[2134] For sure.

[2135] But he already had it so prominently displayed famously that I knew people would you know, accuse me of copying him.

[2136] What tattoos did you almost get and not get?

[2137] None, but you know, I covered one up.

[2138] Yeah.

[2139] I had a huge one that I covered up.

[2140] Yeah.

[2141] And my defense of that was, It was on the cover of a Soul Side album when I was 18, and I thought it was really cool.

[2142] And it was a sun with fire coming out of it.

[2143] Right.

[2144] After the fact, as these became popular, you could have described the fire that was coming out as, quote, tribal.

[2145] And I did not like the direction that tribal tattoos were heading in, nor the folks that were wearing them.

[2146] getting giant tribal tattoos.

[2147] So it turned on me, basically.

[2148] Oh, I see.

[2149] I had this thing that I liked.

[2150] You know, it would be a great example.

[2151] It would be like if I was Hindi and I had gotten that swastika on me. Oh, boy.

[2152] And then all of a sudden, that Nazi party comes into power and you're like, oh, heavens, no, I've got to change this in a hurry.

[2153] All right.

[2154] Sure.

[2155] Yeah, that's basically what happened to me. I started noticing everyone on an MTV show who was 18 had some gigantic tribal thing.

[2156] I was like, I got to fix this right quick.

[2157] The irony is you are on an MTV show.

[2158] Well, that is a very good point.

[2159] And it was on display several times on there.

[2160] You can see it on Baby Mama.

[2161] Yeah, yeah.

[2162] Listeners, if you're interested in seeing that tattoo.

[2163] A little tattooage.

[2164] You can see it there.

[2165] I got it right before I met Kristen.

[2166] Got it covered.

[2167] Yeah.

[2168] So, oh, you talk about the famous study about hearing a thud in your head.

[2169] So that is the Rosenhan experiment.

[2170] I'm so glad you found it.

[2171] I was buckling up.

[2172] That it wasn't real.

[2173] That you were going to tell.

[2174] Well, because I watched it in a eight -part YouTube documentary thing.

[2175] Oh.

[2176] That I think had been produced by the BBC or something.

[2177] So I was like, oh, she's going to say it doesn't exist or something.

[2178] Yeah.

[2179] Okay.

[2180] I thought maybe it didn't.

[2181] But it does.

[2182] The Rosen Hahn experiment or Thud experiment.

[2183] This is a paragraph, so buckle up, okay?

[2184] Was an experiment conducted to determine the validity of psychiatric diagnoses.

[2185] The experimenters feigned hallucinations to enter psychiatric hospitals and then acted normal afterwards.

[2186] They were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders and were given antipsychotic drugs.

[2187] The study was conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan, a Stanford University professor, and published by the journal Science under the title On Being Sane, in insane places.

[2188] Hmm.

[2189] It is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.

[2190] Rosenhan's study was done in eight parts.

[2191] Maybe your YouTube thing was each part.

[2192] Oh, that makes sense.

[2193] Yeah.

[2194] Because there's a really fun twist at the end of it that I'm sure you're going to get to.

[2195] I don't know.

[2196] The first part involved the use of healthy associates or pseudopatients, three women and five men, including Rosenhan himself.

[2197] who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 psychiatric hospitals in five states in the United States.

[2198] All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

[2199] After admission, the pseudo -patients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had no longer experienced any additional hallucinations.

[2200] All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and had to agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release.

[2201] The average time that the patient spent in the hospital was 19 days.

[2202] All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia in remission before their release.

[2203] I mean, look, all but one.

[2204] Isn't that crazy?

[2205] Jesus.

[2206] So the awesome end of that is, I don't know which hospital, but one in particular that had prided itself on being the gold standard of psychiatric evaluation said, that could have never happened at our hospital.

[2207] I challenge him to send us five over the next three months.

[2208] We will tell you which ones are full of shit.

[2209] And so three months goes by or whatever the term was.

[2210] And they ask him, okay, who was it?

[2211] And he says it was these four people.

[2212] And he says, I didn't send anyone.

[2213] it was a fucking double fuck you yeah oh my god isn't that awesome but i do believe this led this whole thing led to the dsm this is what created yeah you said that i didn't see that at all i can look again well maybe not quite directly but this was a popular thing when it happened and i think as a result you know it may be some other things were happening but then they decided to standardize the evaluation which is self -problematic when you just told that twist i felt like it was a horror movie A little bit.

[2214] I got a little scared.

[2215] Scared that you wouldn't be sent to a psychiatric facility.

[2216] I don't know what.

[2217] I just got scared.

[2218] Maybe you need one of those, like, thunder shirts.

[2219] They give dogs.

[2220] They're really heavy shirt you wear all the time.

[2221] So you feel safe and not skittish?

[2222] I should probably have like an anxiety animal, but I'm not a big animal person.

[2223] Right.

[2224] So that would give me more.

[2225] I want you to get a super obnoxious anxiety animal, like a fucking adult male chimpanzee.

[2226] I mean, something that wherever you went, it would just tear the shit out of everyone's house and cars.

[2227] But you would have this lovely, peaceful smile on your face because you felt, by the way, it would work because you'd be so distracted by the havoc your friend was causing that you could never evaluate your own safety.

[2228] Other than that, you'd be in grave danger from the chimp.

[2229] No, he'd love me. He wouldn't hurt me. Then you would most certainly have to raise him from a baby.

[2230] I like the idea of having a tiny chimp with me. Yeah, Bubbles, like Mike Jackson had.

[2231] Oh, he had one?

[2232] Yeah, Bubbles.

[2233] You don't remember his chimp?

[2234] Bubbles were diapers, not Hellobellos, unfortunately.

[2235] Unfortunately, there was a leaky diaper.

[2236] But, yeah, he traveled all around with bubbles.

[2237] And then obviously, Bubbles took up residence at Neverland Ranch.

[2238] I am curious what happened to Bubbles because, again, a chimp is the worst pet a human being can have because they're five times the strength of a human and as smart as a seven -year -old.

[2239] So you're in, you know, imagine your current seven -year -old was five times stronger than you.

[2240] That's just a recipe for disaster.

[2241] Ugh.

[2242] Yeah.

[2243] That is a lovely seven -year -old, but sure.

[2244] I don't think so.

[2245] Bubbles lives in Florida now.

[2246] Oh, he does.

[2247] He retired in Florida?

[2248] Oh, I didn't know that.

[2249] I didn't know about bubbles.

[2250] And the way you say, I were saying it.

[2251] That is so twisted.

[2252] That he had a chimp?

[2253] Yes.

[2254] That was a, we were just joking one minute ago.

[2255] And then it got really real.

[2256] Look, man, Mike Jackson is a very troubling figure.

[2257] You just add up, you know, you got bubbles in the mix.

[2258] It gets worse and worse.

[2259] You have pain off many people to get out of being prosecuted for pedophilia.

[2260] You have the room they discuss.

[2261] covered in his house after his death.

[2262] That was full of child pornography.

[2263] You have him holding his baby over that rallying in Europe.

[2264] Oh, my God.

[2265] I forgot about that.

[2266] God.

[2267] I mean, that was bonkers.

[2268] Yeah.

[2269] He must have.

[2270] Oh, this is a good topic because we got into it on the flight home from San Antonio.

[2271] I think we're only presented two options in this country.

[2272] It's either you're for justice or you're just super tolerant and compassionate.

[2273] Right.

[2274] I don't think people realize you can be like uber compassionate and demand justice and that people pay the consequences that are due to them.

[2275] Like I can, so I guess where I'm saying is I feel quite bad for Mike Jackson.

[2276] Me too.

[2277] There's that.

[2278] Me too.

[2279] All those things combined tell me that person didn't feel great inside.

[2280] And we know he was abused.

[2281] Like there was horrible stuff happening.

[2282] Yeah, I mean he's heavily medicated and all these things.

[2283] I think, you know, he should have been punished with the full weight of the law of the molested kids.

[2284] Yeah.

[2285] And yet I also could shed a tear for his life.

[2286] Yeah, me too.

[2287] Yeah, yeah.

[2288] And I feel that way about a lot of criminals.

[2289] I know.

[2290] I watch the most just troubling, troubling documentary on Frontline a couple weeks ago about this doctor who was practicing on this Native American reservation.

[2291] And he molested over the course of 10 years, like 100 boys.

[2292] and they couldn't interview nearly any of the boys that this had happened to because they were all in prison.

[2293] Almost every one of his victims was in prison.

[2294] They showed a few of them.

[2295] They had like face tattoos and they had gotten really buff.

[2296] And I was just looking at them going, all these poor guys did everything that they could to reclaim their masculinity.

[2297] Yeah.

[2298] And now they're in prison and this human sent them there.

[2299] Yeah.

[2300] So you can have, you obviously have compassion.

[2301] I feel so bad that these boys' lives were ruined by another human being.

[2302] I also really wish that whatever early crimes they committed had been met with a system that could truly rehabilitate them and give them tools and give them therapy and help them rejoin our society.

[2303] I know.

[2304] And then yet, of course, if they hurt people who are violent, I think they got to serve their time.

[2305] Yeah.

[2306] So.

[2307] Yeah, I'm the same.

[2308] Although it's like where does the pattern stop or does it?

[2309] Like that man who molested all them probably had an equally horrid.

[2310] something like you can keep going back and back that these patterns they just perpetuate this horrible horrible behavior well that was the coolest thing i've been rachel wood said which is abuses of virus yeah it is it spreads it really is yeah yeah oh cheers john gotman oh okay so Oh, boy.

[2311] I'm going to stare over here while I do that.

[2312] No, boy.

[2313] Did they cite John and brain rules for babies?

[2314] There is a part where he mentions the Gottman Institute.

[2315] But it's not really the part that you were talking about.

[2316] So I don't know.

[2317] Maybe he just, maybe this person just is really knowledgeable in their studies and stuff.

[2318] And then so he just used.

[2319] That's like now in his brain, part of his philosophy.

[2320] Yeah.

[2321] You know?

[2322] I believe that theory.

[2323] I'm not going to say that anyone was stealing on here, stealing ideas, plagiarizing.

[2324] Well, not intentionally.

[2325] I think we all plagiarize all the fucking time and we genuinely don't realize we're doing it.

[2326] No idea is like brand new in your brain.

[2327] What was I showing you the other day?

[2328] Oh, Hooper.

[2329] I showed the girls I put Hooper on, the great Bert Reynolds movie directed by Hal Needham.

[2330] Oh, uh -huh.

[2331] The goddamn opening credit sequence is almost identical to my character introduction in chips.

[2332] I mean, it is.

[2333] He's getting ready.

[2334] That's all these shots of his different scars.

[2335] And then he takes a bunch of pills and I take me. No, I can tell you with absolute certainty that when I was writing that scene, never once that I think, oh, I want to do it like Hooper.

[2336] Right, right.

[2337] Not even like as an homage or a nod.

[2338] Nope.

[2339] It would have never.

[2340] I didn't even remember that title sequence.

[2341] I know.

[2342] But I was watching it.

[2343] oh, my God, it's almost shot the exact same way.

[2344] Wow, that's crazy.

[2345] I would definitely have someone watch it.

[2346] And then, yeah, how am I to know?

[2347] No, you don't know.

[2348] That this idea I got from my brain wasn't a memory.

[2349] Exactly.

[2350] I don't know that.

[2351] No, there's no way to know.

[2352] That's why you got to be, you got to keep your good ideas under lock and key and never tell anyone because you never know what they're going to use and then think they created.

[2353] That's the takeaway.

[2354] Mm -hmm.

[2355] Mm -hmm.

[2356] Yeah.

[2357] And then I guess all you can do is if someone pointed that out, like, hey, man, I think you ripped off Hooper.

[2358] I guess I did.

[2359] I would have to watch it and then just go, oh, it's quite possible.

[2360] Yeah.

[2361] I can tell you I didn't intentionally.

[2362] Yeah.

[2363] But, but yeah, man, that's pretty darn close.

[2364] And I loved that movie.

[2365] Yeah.

[2366] But also, it's in movies that it happens all the time and songs, in art. It's just like repeating stuff.

[2367] Yeah, and probably not the first time they introduced a character by showing off a bunch of scar.

[2368] So, you know, it's not like it was the plot line of Forrest Gump, where you're like, well, come on, buddy.

[2369] No one else had thought of that.

[2370] Right, right, right.

[2371] But even that, I'm sure, could be connected to some Greek play.

[2372] I'm sure, yeah, inspired by some Greek play about a guy who walked across Athens.

[2373] Yeah.

[2374] I fought the Romans and carried people out.

[2375] Yeah, that's a good movie.

[2376] Oh, it really is.

[2377] Really is.

[2378] It's a really, really good movie, though.

[2379] So it's like one of those movies that I like know is really good.

[2380] I've seen it multiple times.

[2381] But I don't ever want to watch that movie again in my whole life.

[2382] Interesting because it was one that Rosenbaum cited as one he can't watch five minutes of without watching the whole thing.

[2383] And I'm in that camp, too.

[2384] Yeah.

[2385] And you know why for me?

[2386] I think, and then it made me really start breaking down what makes different movies highly watchable.

[2387] Because for me, Pulp Fiction is probably the number one in that way.

[2388] And I was thinking, oh, you know, movies that are shifting time and space, maybe even genres within movies.

[2389] Yeah.

[2390] And Forrest Gump's like 25 different lives.

[2391] Totally.

[2392] And you keep shifting ages and timelines.

[2393] So I wonder.

[2394] Just when you're getting bored of it And you're like, I shouldn't rewatch this movie for the 11th time.

[2395] All of a sudden they're in Louisiana and you're like, oh, wait.

[2396] Yeah.

[2397] Is that how does this go?

[2398] It keeps your attention, that's for sure.

[2399] Your attention.

[2400] But it is, there's like a sadness to that movie.

[2401] Because he's mentally challenged.

[2402] I don't know.

[2403] I don't think it's that.

[2404] I mean, there's some actual sad things that happen.

[2405] Is it the unrequainted love with, with, uh.

[2406] Maybe.

[2407] Um, Jenny.

[2408] Robin.

[2409] Robin Wright pen, Jenny.

[2410] Right.

[2411] I don't even think it's Robin Wright anymore, is it?

[2412] Robin Wright.

[2413] You're in the other way.

[2414] Robin Wright.

[2415] What if they were married and she changed her name from Robin Wright to Robin Wright Pan?

[2416] And then they got divorced and she changed it to Robin Pan.

[2417] Exactly.

[2418] And she dropped her maiden name.

[2419] That would be a cool flip.

[2420] Could have.

[2421] Anyway, yes, she's in it.

[2422] Well, and it's unrequainted love.

[2423] Do you think that's it?

[2424] I'm sure it.

[2425] That's part of it.

[2426] There's a lot of life sad things like that.

[2427] Like, not like the war, of course, is sad.

[2428] Sure.

[2429] But there's just this, like, underlying sadness.

[2430] I dug that.

[2431] Yeah, like she had been clearly molested by her dad.

[2432] Yes.

[2433] Oh, I forgot about that.

[2434] God, yeah.

[2435] Do you have a favorite line from the movie?

[2436] I do.

[2437] I don't think I know it well enough to quote.

[2438] I like when he goes, sorry for ruining your block panther party.

[2439] Ha, ha.

[2440] Sorry for ruining your Black Panther party.

[2441] Oh, yeah.

[2442] Yeah.

[2443] But it makes me a little sad.

[2444] Yeah.

[2445] Oh, John Gottman.

[2446] We're allowed to talk about other stuff.

[2447] Of course we are.

[2448] I'm just making fun of the fact.

[2449] I'm just being self -aware, making fun of the fact that we've talked about him for one second.

[2450] Well, there's not many facts.

[2451] There's not many facts.

[2452] Oh, perfect.

[2453] Then I'll stop worrying about it.

[2454] You're really highlighting that there's not many facts.

[2455] You're putting on facts.

[2456] bit of a magnifying glass on the lack of facts.

[2457] Magnifying glass on the lack of facts.

[2458] Could that be the title of your autobiography?

[2459] Oh, my God.

[2460] Maybe.

[2461] What does it even mean?

[2462] It's a mystery.

[2463] You find out on the last page what it means.

[2464] Yes.

[2465] Well, I got a little nervous because during this episode, I asked him, well, a couple things.

[2466] But I said, it seems like some personalities are just going to be better suited for this whole thing.

[2467] like marriage positive relationships than others and he said the dimension that makes people better suited for relationships is agreeability oh sure yeah that makes a lot of sense it definitely makes sense but i don't i don't know i don't like love highly agreeable people well i think if someone let's say you're steve jobs Like, I don't know what his wife was like or his ex -wife.

[2468] So I don't want to, you know, accuse her of being any certain way.

[2469] But there are people who are just in general highly acquiescent and they don't feel like it's a failure or a loss.

[2470] It doesn't pain them to go like, fine, I'll go along with that plan.

[2471] Yeah.

[2472] Which is totally cool.

[2473] There's no reason that you have to be stubborn by nature.

[2474] So if someone is happy in their life being super acquiescent and they actually don't want to make any decisions, and they want to be along for the ride, then certainly they would be a great partner for someone like Steve Jobs.

[2475] Totally.

[2476] That's true.

[2477] Yeah, I don't desire that personally.

[2478] I want someone who's going to fight tooth and nail to do the thing they want to do so that I don't ever feel like someone's doing something just to make me happy.

[2479] That's my bigger fear than not even getting to do the thing I want to do.

[2480] Like, how did you feel when you looked over at me and we were at that magic show?

[2481] Well, okay, where is this going?

[2482] And don't try to guess where it's going.

[2483] I'm just asking a very sincere question.

[2484] Well, I thought you thought it was funny.

[2485] Oh, it was really funny.

[2486] We had a blast there.

[2487] Right.

[2488] So I wasn't like, oh, no, he's not having fun.

[2489] Right, right.

[2490] But you wanted me to think that.

[2491] No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. I was wondering if, like, if I took you to a motorcycle race, I would be really concerned you weren't enjoying yourself.

[2492] Uh -huh.

[2493] And like, but some guys would just, they want their own.

[2494] old lady wherever they're at, and they don't give a fuck if they like the motorcycle race, they just want them there.

[2495] I'm just not that way, you know?

[2496] I don't think you're that way.

[2497] You wouldn't want someone just No. Right?

[2498] I wouldn't, but I would also I would feel like I don't know, not I feel like this is like a weird three -part thing or like it's like stacked because you, so you didn't want to go to the magic show.

[2499] You know, in general, I'm not very interested in watching live magic.

[2500] So why did you do that?

[2501] To spend time with you and Rob.

[2502] Okay.

[2503] So then it's a trap then.

[2504] Well, hold on.

[2505] And 25 % of me was very open to witnessing something like David Blaine, which I probably would like.

[2506] Right.

[2507] Like if I were like Harrison Ford during that.

[2508] David Blaine.

[2509] When David Blaine's there and he's like, get the fuck out of my house.

[2510] Yeah.

[2511] I feel like...

[2512] He was shocked to his core.

[2513] Get out of my house.

[2514] I feel like that could have been me. Uh -huh.

[2515] You know, so I'm not opposed to having that experience.

[2516] Right.

[2517] And I'm slightly open to having it.

[2518] Okay.

[2519] So if you went to spend time with Rob and me, then you do want to be there.

[2520] Like, this feels like a trap, kind of, to be like.

[2521] Okay, I'll go to just be with you, but I don't want to be there.

[2522] And then what about what's the other person supposed to do?

[2523] Like, I mean...

[2524] Well, I think the motorcycle race is a better analogy because you're likely never going to enjoy a motorcycle race, right?

[2525] There's not even like five.

[2526] No, that's not true at all.

[2527] If I was there, yeah, with friends, I could be anywhere.

[2528] That's true.

[2529] That's true.

[2530] I could be anywhere.

[2531] I mean, I guess the magic show is different because you can't really talk.

[2532] So you do have to watch.

[2533] Yeah, it's not encouraged.

[2534] although we did do quite a fair amount of communicating throughout the performance.

[2535] We did.

[2536] We did talk.

[2537] We were not very respectful.

[2538] But I...

[2539] We never got shushed in our defense.

[2540] Well, now I feel like you were upset that whole time.

[2541] Oh, my God, you do?

[2542] Well, yeah.

[2543] I wasn't upset at all.

[2544] Or you were dreading it.

[2545] What I was asking you is, were you nervous when I was there?

[2546] Oh, I hope he enjoys this.

[2547] That was my question that you're way overthinking.

[2548] Well, no. I'm not overthinking it.

[2549] I shouldn't have to think that because you should never be doing something that makes me think that.

[2550] Like, you shouldn't be just acquiescing or placating.

[2551] We just got our answer.

[2552] Our answer is you wouldn't want to be with someone that acquiesces.

[2553] Yeah.

[2554] You'd like somebody to be with someone.

[2555] Yeah.

[2556] But I trust that you wouldn't do that.

[2557] But you did.

[2558] I would.

[2559] I'd go see anything.

[2560] I'd go see things with you that I would.

[2561] otherwise hate to go see.

[2562] For sure.

[2563] And then you'll be upset about it?

[2564] No. That means I'm high on the agreeability chart, apparently.

[2565] But you, no. But you just said that you don't like doing things you don't like doing.

[2566] Well, also, you know what?

[2567] You and I are in a much different paradigm.

[2568] Why?

[2569] We're applying a paradigm to you and I that doesn't exist.

[2570] So for Kristen and I, it's different because I'm with Kristen every single day, all day and I'm going to be to like die.

[2571] So I am in no way thinking, oh, I should leap at the opportunity to spend time with her because I'm just going to spend lots of time with her.

[2572] Whereas you are a friend and so I might leap at any opportunity to join you at do something because we're friends and I don't see you all day long every day.

[2573] I mean, I kind of do.

[2574] But you know what I'm saying?

[2575] We're kind of putting a paradigm on it that maybe is not the right paradigm.

[2576] Right.

[2577] I can definitely see we're married couples who are going to fucking see each other nonstop.

[2578] One of them, the husband's like, I'm going to the truck poles this week, and you're coming.

[2579] And she's like, no, I hate the truck poles.

[2580] It's noisy as fuck.

[2581] It smells like exhaust.

[2582] Yeah.

[2583] I don't want to do it.

[2584] Yeah.

[2585] But friends would probably do it, you know.

[2586] Mm -hmm.

[2587] Yeah.

[2588] Oh, okay, you said in the mask you live in that they say that 50 % of boys are abused during childhood.

[2589] Physically abused.

[2590] Yeah.

[2591] I could not find that stat, although I didn't rewatch the whole movie, but I did do research.

[2592] It's at the very end.

[2593] There's title cards at the end.

[2594] Okay, I'll have to look.

[2595] I looked up stats on it.

[2596] And I got a bunch, but I couldn't find that one.

[2597] So I will report back after I watch it.

[2598] But they did say that 25 % of boys are bullied.

[2599] That's a lot.

[2600] And then in another article, I found, researchers have found that at least one in six men have experienced sexual abuse or assault, whether in childhood or as adults.

[2601] And this is probably a low estimate, and since it doesn't include non -contact experiences, which can also have lasting negative effects.

[2602] So.

[2603] That's a hard number to know because it's so underreported.

[2604] Yeah, exactly.

[2605] Yeah.

[2606] What guy feels safe saying that out loud?

[2607] I think that about like rape statistics too that are already like so high, but so many of those aren't not getting reported.

[2608] P .S. I think this is about all statistics.

[2609] Like anything that's remotely negative, like drug use?

[2610] There's no way.

[2611] What they're asking people?

[2612] Right.

[2613] Exactly.

[2614] How many people are admitting that they use drugs?

[2615] Yeah.

[2616] Yeah.

[2617] I know.

[2618] True.

[2619] True, true, true.

[2620] Well.

[2621] That wraps up Gottman?

[2622] Sure.

[2623] Well, we had a lot of fun just getting to those few facts, didn't we?

[2624] Yeah.

[2625] I did.

[2626] Yeah, me too.

[2627] And boy, do we have fun in San Antonio.

[2628] You came out and you gave the inaugural firing.

[2629] Shooting.

[2630] It was so apropos that we were in Texas for that.

[2631] Exactly.

[2632] We had a t -shirt gun made.

[2633] We now own a t -shirt gun.

[2634] Thank you, Ryan Hansen, for bringing that idea to our brains.

[2635] Yes.

[2636] It should have been Ryan who shot the inaugural t -shirt.

[2637] Exactly.

[2638] Yeah.

[2639] It would have been, but it couldn't have been.

[2640] Yeah.

[2641] But you shot it first, and then I shot it next.

[2642] Yeah.

[2643] First shot was cool.

[2644] I did like a T .J. Hooker barrel roll on the ground, then got up and shot it.

[2645] Then I tried to pop up from behind the couch.

[2646] Yeah.

[2647] And boy did I shoot it into the second row at about 10 feet away and had an actual thunderbolt of panic in my chest.

[2648] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2649] Sure.

[2650] I went straight to this thing I saw on HBO, Real Sports, about how they're, there's this movement to put nets up along the first baseline in Major League Baseball because people get fucking wrecks.

[2651] Oh, yeah.

[2652] Like bad, bad, bad.

[2653] And they showed pictures and stuff of these different people have been injured by foul balls.

[2654] I mean, people's heads have been, you know, opened up.

[2655] Decapitated?

[2656] Not decapitated, but opened up.

[2657] And I immediately went to, oh, Jesus, I'm going to look in the audience and someone's going to be holding a broken nose or a missing eye.

[2658] What if they were holding a nose?

[2659] All of their teeth.

[2660] And it was still in the shape of a smile.

[2661] Oh, they're still so happy to be there.

[2662] Oh, then I would have just gone, oh, someone's dentures fell out.

[2663] That's fine.

[2664] Right.

[2665] I mean, they can just slip those back in.

[2666] But luckily, and I don't know if the gentleman was downplaying it, but no one was hurt.

[2667] He said he ducked, and we didn't really ask about the person behind him.

[2668] That person may have been rendered unable to speak.

[2669] And then you're right, big, big wave of embarrassment.

[2670] Oh.

[2671] Then followed by what I always do when I'm super embarrassed.

[2672] This is guffaw laughing.

[2673] We, you know, then we kept going.

[2674] Yeah.

[2675] That was a real good time.

[2676] That was fun.

[2677] Guys, come to our live shows.

[2678] They're fun.

[2679] Oh, I did want to say this.

[2680] This is not an advertisement.

[2681] We've been touring the country and we've been going to all these historic theaters.

[2682] So in San Antonio, we were at the majestic theater.

[2683] And it was so beautiful inside.

[2684] It looked like Pirates of the Caribbean.

[2685] The ceiling had like little light bulbs in it.

[2686] to look like stars.

[2687] And it's such a unique environment to be sitting down in.

[2688] It just is very exciting.

[2689] And I just wanted to urge people to go see stuff at these theaters.

[2690] Not our show, but just like go.

[2691] If you live by a city that's got one of these 100 -year -old theaters that's been restored, like go there.

[2692] It feels so cool being inside of them.

[2693] That's true.

[2694] Yeah.

[2695] I hadn't been one in forever until we started touring.

[2696] Yeah.

[2697] It's a special vibe.

[2698] It is.

[2699] It's worth.

[2700] going out of your way to experience.

[2701] Yeah.

[2702] All right.

[2703] That's my two -cent tip for today.

[2704] I love you, Monica.

[2705] I love you.

[2706] Love you, Wabi, Wob.

[2707] Love you too.

[2708] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[2709] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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