TRANSCRIPT

Shane Hewitt: Shane Hewitt and the Night Shift podcast. When you want to have a conversation about relationships, most people would like to have a conversation about love and what makes a relationship work.

The cool part about polarity is that you can’t know hot unless you know cold, you can’t know up unless you know down, you can’t know fast unless you know, slow and so on. We kind of get the premise of that. And sometimes we just wanna be not cold.

We’re not really caring if we’re hot. We just want to be not cold today. And when we can figure that part out, we can look at everything in life differently.

In relationships, we often romanticize all of the beautiful things that we wanna do. We wanna walk, we wanna hold hands, we wanna kiss, we want to make love, we wanna laugh.

What we don’t spend time figuring out is how do we navigate the not any of that part? And that’s where I sent out an invite to a couple that I just appreciate their work.

John Gotman, Julie Gotman, uh, both here in conversation. If you know the Gotmans, this makes sense for you. If you don’t know the Gotmans, you probably do. Four Horsemen of the relationship apocalypse, and all of their work. I like to describe the Gomans as this, is that they are, they are two relationships that like Tony Robbins is to motivation. And I just suggest that you take a minute and uh give it a Google and look it up, especially if you want your relationship to be different.

John and Julie, thanks for coming.

John or Julie Gottman: Thank you so much, Jane. Yeah, thanks for having us. Um, you have a new book out. It’s called Fight Right.

Shane Hewitt: And it might seem strange to head into conversations about love and relationships to talk about fighting, but it turns out through your work that uh not only is fighting possibly good for you, but it also is a bit of a precursor, uh, a preface to the next chapter in your story, um.

Shane Hewitt: That that you found. Uh there’s a great TED talk you’ve done on it. Um, tell me about fighting.

John or Julie Gottman: Well, um, most people when they are fighting, think first of all, that conflict is bad for a relationship and that it indicates doom in the future. And what we have seen is that is absolutely not true, that couples are bound to have conflicts because they’re two different brains, two different personalities, and two different sets of lifestyle preferences. So there’s always gonna be, you know, a little clash here and there.

John or Julie Gottman: How do people talk about conflict? And when we studied over 3000 couples second by second, we found that the couples who were successful 6 years down the road, even 20 years down the road, had a particular way of talking about conflict that actually drew them closer together uh with more understanding and compassion than wrenching them apart.

John or Julie Gottman: Um, and that was a beautiful thing to see. That’s what we wrote about.

Shane Hewitt: What is conflict then? I think for people conflict can show up in many different ways. Uh, some people are avoidant, some people like to get right at it, some people are passive aggressive. Um, these are just words that come to my mind. This is not um a researched question, but some people like to throw things. So how do you define conflict?

Shane Hewitt: Yeah, we actually found that there were 3 different major styles that people dealt with conflict. One was a kind of volatile, you know, very emotional style where they would start the conflict discussion immediately persuading their partner that their partner was wrong and they were right. And we call those volatile couples, very emotional, um.

Shane Hewitt: We had couples who were the opposite, avoidant of conflict, never tried to persuade one another, um, and, you know, really just kind of agreed to disagree.

Shane Hewitt: And never really resolved anything. And then we had a coup, uh, another style that was sort of in the middle where, you know, they did express their emotions, but in a very controlled logical kind of way, and then moved toward problem solving. And of course we had mismatches where one person might be volatile and the other person might be an avoider. And what we discovered was that all the styles of dealing with conflict were successful.

Shane Hewitt: As long as the ratio of positivity to negativity in a conflict discussion equaled or exceeded 5 to 15 times as many positive things as negative things, um, the, the, the actual style of dealing with conflict was irrelevant in terms of the future success of the relationship.

John or Julie Gottman: So let me define uh what positive and negative actually means in terms of interactions.

John or Julie Gottman: Um, positive interactions are either a facial expression, words, uh, even a body gesture that indicate the person is interested, the person is listening, uh, maybe the person is validating, uh, but the person, uh, that is expressing those positive things and they can even be neutral, just nodding the head, um.

John or Julie Gottman: are very positive in terms of how they are received by the other person. While negative interactions are very similar to what you just described, Shane, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which include criticism.

John or Julie Gottman: Putting your partner down, that is contempt, which is sulfuric acid for a relationship, name calling, putting somebody down with cutting sarcasm or acting very superior defensiveness, which most of us feel some of the time, uh, and what we call stonewalling, which is shutting down completely and not giving your partner any response.

John or Julie Gottman: And we discovered with stonewalling that oftentimes folks who were stonewalling and shutting down for minutes at a time, maybe hours or even days were physiologically flooded, meaning they were in fight or flight, even.

John or Julie Gottman: While they were sitting there talking to their partner, they felt like they were facing a saber-toothed tiger, feeling attacked. Uh, and so they would shut down to soothe themselves because they were so upset. Their heart rates would be over 100 beats a minute. So those are all negative interactions, and we count seconds of those and add them up in order to determine the ratio.

Shane Hewitt: Hm fascinating. So, let me bring this personal then.

Shane Hewitt: I, I’m generally a diplomat. These are my words, so I’m hoping you can translate them for me. I’m generally a diplomat, but I also wait. I think I do that. It’s sort of avoidant until I’m ready. So that’s probably stonewalling if I’m hearing this right, but then when I’m ready, it’s generally a kind conversation about trying to do it, or, you know, I, we can’t talk about this today. Today is not a good day, life circumstance. Sunday looks like a day where we can be attentive to it.

Shane Hewitt: Wait and see. Now, that sounds romantic, but it’s sometimes not. Sometimes it’s just build up, build up, build up, build up, build up, right, that heart rate thing that you talk about, like it’s like you’re adding, adding, adding, adding, adding. So technically I would say that I’m probably avoiding it. And I can’t be the only one that goes through that because I don’t want to have, and maybe as we grow up in life, when we’re younger, tend to have a little bit more explosive conversations, volatile like you described. I don’t mean violent, I just mean reckless, careless use of words.

Shane Hewitt: Cutting someone down by accident. So I mean, people go through all of these bits and pieces. Uh, how does it all fit back together again, cause it’s not always, right? Like I wish I could say that I was responsibly just stonewalling, but I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know how to hear that.

Shane Hewitt: It sounds like you’re, you’re a validator, really. Uh, you know, you, you approach things rationally, kindly, and, uh, you know, try to be in a place where you really want to understand your partner’s point of view as well as express your own. So I, I’d call you a validator.

John or Julie Gottman: Yeah, I mean, the, the flooding really is tied to your physiological response to what your partner is saying or doing.

John or Julie Gottman: So if your heart rate’s not above 100 beats a minute, you may be one of those people who really needs to think about what you wanna say, how you want to respond, um, what you’re really feeling. Sometimes it takes a while for us to identify that and name it.

John or Julie Gottman: Um, and that’s perfectly OK.

Shane Hewitt: I feel like this is a safe question to ask because I know on the TED Talk, uh, John, you had said like that your, your type as you go through this by nature, um, will you share what you guys go through for your, your conflict and how you go through? I’m, I’m an avoider. I, you know, I hate conflict and uh so when Julie brings up an issue, I tend to get defensive and

Shane Hewitt: Uh, want to, you know, run away from the conflict. Uh, that’s my natural tendency, uh, but I, you know, I counter that by having, uh, a little notebook in my back pocket that I pull out when she says the dreaded four words we need to talk.

Shane Hewitt: And, and I take notes, you know, so, uh, I’ve, I’ve kind of deal, dealt with my avoidance style with that invention, and Julie, what are

John or Julie Gottman: you? Yeah, so I’m a volatile.

John or Julie Gottman: Um, very much so. I feel things so intensely, uh, and so I, I have learned over the years to take a few minutes, figure out how I wanna say it, and use one of the important tools that we learned from the couples we studied, which we call softened startup. And a softened startup erases criticism. There is no criticism.

John or Julie Gottman: Instead you’re simply saying I’m feeling some emotion about what? What’s the situation you’re feeling, and then what’s your positive need and a positive need means how can your partner shine for you? It’s not what you resent that your partner is doing, it’s the opposite.

John or Julie Gottman: And folks have an easier time listening to that.

John or Julie Gottman: By the way, there have been times when John’s pulled out his notebook, and he’s taken notes for 2 hours every now and then.

Shane Hewitt: Well, this is great because I mean it goes to show that not everybody is perfect and you go through it, which I have a note that I wrote down. Um, it’s just something that I recently started writing about, which is, um, I, I think I’m coming to terms with the fact, keep in mind all things romantic, the perfect house, the perfect relationship, the perfect, you know, couples night, whatever it is.

Shane Hewitt: Mhm. Perfection is the enemy of progress, and I think that’s what I’m learning as I get older, is that I can let go of that, the only thing that gets in the way of progress is not.

Shane Hewitt: And not a lack of willingness to do this. I suppose there’s probably some psychology things that are quite difficult, generally that would get in the way, but really,

Shane Hewitt: This romanticized perfectionism is the only thing that’s getting in the way. We talk about the good enough relationship.

John or Julie Gottman: Right, and we define that as having a relationship in which it feels good to sit down, have a cup of coffee and a pastry, period.

John or Julie Gottman: There don’t have to be there don’t have to be any grand gestures.

Shane Hewitt: See, I think that is romantic though. Like when I, when we sit and when Melanie and I sit and whether it’s a sunrise or a sunset or just in the sunshine or birds are chirping or whatever, I mean, I think that’s some of my favorite.

Shane Hewitt: Bits and pieces as to those moments, right?

John or Julie Gottman: Right. Yeah, however, you know, a lot of people believe in the myth of Walt Disney, you know, where it’s stars in the sky, fireworks are going off, when you kiss, every single time you kiss after 35 years, fireworks.

John or Julie Gottman: Well, not so much, but, um, it, it really comes down to are you feeling connected to your partner or not? How well do you know your partner and their internal world and how interested are you in learning more about who your partner is because we’re constantly evolving and changing, just as you pointed out, Shane, progress.

John or Julie Gottman: Internally, individually, as well as, as a couple. So those big open-ended questions, how are you feeling about your work these days? How are you feeling about the kids?

John or Julie Gottman: How do you think the school is doing in terms of helping our kids learn the right values, etc. Those kinds of questions are wonderful to keep asking each other over the course of decades.

Shane Hewitt: And

Shane Hewitt: we tend to go into those saying, I don’t think the school’s doing a good job, the kids are off track, da da da. We don’t start by being inquisitive, right? We tend to just sort of walk into it.

Shane Hewitt: Uh, Julia said, how can my partner shine for me? That sounds like you need to know where you’re going or at least what you want. And a big notion, but sometimes it can be the smallest little thing of

Shane Hewitt: And I’ll call it straight up. I mean one of my favorite moments is when I come home, and I don’t live with Melanie, um, we, you know, when I come home to see her, and I guess the fact that I just call it home is probably telling now that I realized I said it, um, every now and then she’ll meet me at the door.

Shane Hewitt: I was on a hot day, it’s with a beer. That’s a bonus. That’s where my partner shines for me. Um, is that what we’re talking about? We have to know that?

John or Julie Gottman: Exactly. That’s exactly right. It’s the little moments where your partner.

John or Julie Gottman: Uh, either verbally or nonverbally is expressing, I wanna connect with you, I love you. I kind of know what you like on a hot sunny day. I want to present that to you as a gift and a way of really showing my love and respect for you.

John or Julie Gottman: We call that fondness and admiration, and it’s very, very important to continue doing that. A lot of us think that, you know, after the first maybe year of dating or something, we don’t need to express love anymore.

John or Julie Gottman: Should know it, you know, and we don’t have to do anything to really show it, so, so untrue. Most of us have a little bit of core insecurity somewhere unless we were perfectly parented. Please raise your hand if you were, and, um, that insecurity needs a little bit of nourishing every now and then by.

John or Julie Gottman: Somebody saying, you know what, you just made the coolest comment that was so smart at the party, you know, things like that. It’s wonderful to hear those things.

Shane Hewitt: Grab your pom poms, be the cheerleader, I guess is really. Yeah,

John or Julie Gottman: can be.

Shane Hewitt: Mhm. Very good, John, I’d like to see you get out your pom poms, will you? shake them around.

Shane Hewitt: This

John or Julie Gottman: sounds really cute.

Shane Hewitt: Um, when we talk about the fight right book specifically, I mean fighting right is an important part.

Shane Hewitt: Of being able to dig into this, and

Shane Hewitt: As you guys have done this research, I mean, you’ve been married for, I think it’s 38 years this year, you know, it’s, it’s pretty good. I think you guys will make it if you give it a shot. Um, the, uh, but I know, of course, all the work too with all of this stuff.

Shane Hewitt: It must be really cool. I mean, it’s really cool when you see your clients and use your writing, use your books, put it into action. It like some of the Gotman teaching is you can learn it in all kinds of different ways, just give it a Google, um.

Shane Hewitt: And there are specific people that will teach you different methods of through relationships. It’s quite, it’s quite amazing what you’ve set up.

Shane Hewitt: But it must be really cool in the moment we see it happen at home, whether it’s with the two of you or the family and people around you, and in those moments, because it’s great to have a theory, and it’s great to have evidence, and it’s great to see it work elsewhere. But in that moment where you’ve got your notepad out, John, and you’re writing your notes, or Julie, when you’re gonna throw the margarine tub or I’m making that part out. But you, and then you all of a sudden, you know, you know, you have that breath, you have that thought, the tool kicks in, and then you go, oh yeah.

Shane Hewitt: And then resolve, holding hands, sitting having coffee together or tea, and then you go, whoa, we did it. Um, it must be different for, maybe it’s the same, different for the two of you when you see all of your work come into that little instant.

John or Julie Gottman: Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing, Shane, you know, especially when couples have started, uh, in a place of distress of, you know, disappointment, depression, uh, they’re in a lot of pain, and it’s merely because nobody took relationships one on one in high school.

John or Julie Gottman: We didn’t learn, you know, the proper methods, the, the really effective methods for talking to our partner about a complaint or a problem between us. Other, uh, teachers were people like our parents or a teacher that scolded us, you know.

John or Julie Gottman: And those are typically the wrong ways a lot of times unless you had parents who were, you know, really Olympic athletes when it came to dealing with conflict. So what we saw was a three step process in our couples in terms of resolving a current conflict that included what I first started with that softened startup, how you bring up a complaint without criticism.

John or Julie Gottman: And with especially perpetual problems, uh, 69% of all problems couples have go on forever, they never get resolved.

John or Julie Gottman: Um, people would sit and ask each other these questions that would deepen their understanding of one another. Questions like, do you have any ethics, beliefs or values that are part of your position on this issue? Do you have some background history or childhood history that’s informing your position?

John or Julie Gottman: Why is this so important to you? What are you feeling? What’s your ideal dream here? Is there some underlying purpose or, you know, real wish for something meaningful in your position? So those kinds of questions, one person would ask the other and just listen to the answers, not rebut them.

John or Julie Gottman: And then they would trade roles, the other asking the first person the questions. So by the end of that conversation, there’d be much more depth of understanding and oftentimes more compassion. That’s the way primarily that couples create quote unquote fights or conflicts that are actually, I’d call them royal roads to greater understanding. They’re beautiful.

Shane Hewitt: What’s interesting when you say that, cause what I heard in all of that was

Shane Hewitt: We often don’t know why we feel this way, why this has happened and and then it strikes us funny.

Shane Hewitt: And it makes us feel uncomfortable. We don’t really know why, and then we’ll say like what’s going on? And they don’t really know the answer. And one of the things that I’ve learned is that, and especially in this world here, is that in many cases.

Shane Hewitt: The answer is only as good as the question.

Shane Hewitt: And if partner can study the question instead of the expectation of

Shane Hewitt: Some sort of well formed poetic answer about why this bothers me.

Shane Hewitt: Wouldn’t that change the outcome?

John or Julie Gottman: Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Oftentimes those great romantic poetic answers are what the other person, what the speaker thinks the listener wants to hear, as opposed to really being formulated inside the heart of the speaker and then being the honest truthful response coming from inside them.

Shane Hewitt: Magical to have a specific question like, is there something about beliefs or ethics that that’s hitting you here, right? And then then you you’re calling to attention that part of it. Well, maybe. Well, my dad always said, my mom always said, right? Right. That’s right. At work we’re supposed to do this, but he’s doing that. Now I feel stressed, right? So that that’s quite amazing. In the TED Talk, you guys spoke about the 1st 3 minutes.

Shane Hewitt: You can figure things out in a fight, not only the outcome of the conflict, the future of the relationship, and where it’s all going. Can you tell me about that?

Shane Hewitt: Yeah, if, if, uh, we were surprised that um

Shane Hewitt: You know, we could predict the future of a relationship with a fifteen-minute conflict discussion that a couple had and uh

Shane Hewitt: The woman who was running my lab said, I wonder if we lopped off the last 3 minutes. Could we do it? Could we do the prediction in 12 minutes? And we could. She said, Well, what if we keep going? Let’s lop off the next 3 minutes. Could we do it with 9 minutes? And we could, well, could we do it with 6 minutes? Yeah, we could actually do it in the 1st 3 minutes because, uh, a couple that’s headed for disaster.

Shane Hewitt: Really starts the conflict by casting their partner as their enemy.

Shane Hewitt: They’re not collaborating to solve a problem together. They’re, they’re fighting against one another as opposed to fighting with one another to come up with a solution.

John or Julie Gottman: You know, I, I think in a nutshell that 1st 3 minutes, either plus or minus is defined by is the speaker describing themselves or describing the partner.

John or Julie Gottman: It comes down to that. Describing yourself means basically describing your feelings and your needs. Describing the other person typically comes down to criticism. You always leave the kitchen a mess. You never pay the bills on time. You always forget to pick up the kids on Friday. Those kinds of always and nevers and pointing your finger, you, you, you.

John or Julie Gottman: Our criticisms, and they don’t work. They just inspire defensiveness. There’s not gonna be any understanding there.

Shane Hewitt: They’re so absolute, always do this, I never do that. Another one I would throw in there would be just.

Shane Hewitt: Yeah, you’re just a whatever. Oh boy, you wanna chop someone’s knees out negatively in an argument. You call them just to anything.

Shane Hewitt: It just steals, it sucks the confidence right out of you. Um, the fight right book, why should we, uh, go by it?

John or Julie Gottman: Oh gosh,

Shane Hewitt: because to go buy it.

John or Julie Gottman: Well, you know, a lot of people need to go by it. Anybody who is less than really deeply satisfied and content in their relationship, but also people who might um be older, have kids who are becoming adults, um, they may wanna shape how their kids are having relationships a little bit.

John or Julie Gottman: So the fact that it’s research based as opposed to speculation, I mean, there’s a million books out there that are based on just people’s opinions, and oftentimes they’re wrong. So, you know, when you’re studying couples the way we have, it’s not our wisdom that’s creating this book by a long shot. We had to learn from these couples too. It’s the 3000 couples we studied.

John or Julie Gottman: Um, they’re really the co-authors of this book. So we learned how to have a conflict that actually feels good, feels deepening, feels relevant, feels important, um, and incidentally can help resolve conflicts. So.

John or Julie Gottman: Yeah.

Shane Hewitt: It’s totally different when you’re both on the same side trying to solve something, as opposed to being enemies.

Shane Hewitt: How beautiful would it be, or what do you think the world looks like if uh everybody who didn’t need this book in their mind?

Shane Hewitt: Who just wanted to find a new way of doing things, you know, uh, not, not at the end of the road. more peaceful world, I think. Mhm. It really has come back to, it comes back to us. What are you willing to do to get there? I guess it’s really the question. I, I find it quite fascinating. Um, John and Julie Gotman.

Shane Hewitt: I have written and researched so much and done so much. If you truly are in your heart, you think things are great, you wanna make them better, look up the Gomans. If you are struggling and you wanna save it, look up the Gotmans.

Shane Hewitt: I can tell you this, it’s a lot less work to try to repair a relationship than break it up, start another one, do it again, and probably go through it a second time cause you didn’t learn the lesson the first time, then break it up, then do it again, and so on and so forth, than it is to just do a little bit of work now, and what a better way to talk about love than how to protect it. And I thank you both for being here. Thank you.

John or Julie Gottman: Thank you so much, Shane. This has been a wonderful conversation. What about

Shane Hewitt: your question about love?

Shane Hewitt: My question about love is quite simple.

Shane Hewitt: I have a couple things to share with you first, actually, before I say that, now that I think about it, um.

Shane Hewitt: The, I have a piece of writing that I wrote that says, and you’ve you’ve you’ve validated me actually in this conversation in a couple different ways. One of my writing is called Drop the rope.

Shane Hewitt: And the polarity of using a polarizing language, to pull the rope, that tug of war you’re talking about, the against each other.

Shane Hewitt: And so that was great to hear. The other piece of writing of love is.

Shane Hewitt: As I was trying to figure it out, and I have a notion that I’m gonna float your way and plant a seed for maybe discussion in the future.

Shane Hewitt: Is that um love is the word we use to render our experience of presence and connection.

John or Julie Gottman: Interesting. That’s lovely.

Shane Hewitt: So if we’re able to render presence and connection, if we’re using love to render our experience, then that makes me wonder if we should say I love you less and acknowledge specifically more. I love it when you said that, when you held the door for me, I did this, and everything else, we tend to use I love you as a crutch.

Shane Hewitt: Now, the beautiful part of I love you is so magnificent that you can’t say don’t say it.

Shane Hewitt: What if there was something else that we could say in the moment, be specific. And I think that that’s quite beautiful for me. That’s one of the pieces that I’m working on right now is to go, what if we were specific, and what if we didn’t use I love you as the crutch.

Shane Hewitt: Hm, a question for you. For each of you separately if that’s OK, Julie. What does the word love mean to you?

John or Julie Gottman: Um,

John or Julie Gottman: Love does not mean the bells and whistles, the fireworks, uh, the stars in the sky. Love means.

John or Julie Gottman: A profound connection and understanding.

John or Julie Gottman: And appreciation and respect for another person.

John or Julie Gottman: That is.

John or Julie Gottman: Fluid.

John or Julie Gottman: Kind of can change from moment to moment in terms of degree.

John or Julie Gottman: Uh, but.

John or Julie Gottman: Bottom line feels like.

John or Julie Gottman: The rock, the foundation, uh, on which your existence rests.

Shane Hewitt: John, what does the word love mean to you?

Shane Hewitt: I think it means coming home.

Shane Hewitt: And coming home.

Shane Hewitt: Where your partner meets you at the door, just like he said Melanie did for you.

Shane Hewitt: You know, she’s welcoming you to her home, and she is your home.

Shane Hewitt: That’s what it means to me.

Shane Hewitt: It’s so interesting because love for me is the magic that no other words can describe.

Shane Hewitt: Yeah, it’s the moment.

Shane Hewitt: And

Shane Hewitt: It’s, and you both said it, right? Like it’s the rock, it’s the center, it’s the core, it’s what you arrive at. We often I know for me, uh, at the risk of attempting to be poetic is that we often talk about the people, the cliche is it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.

Shane Hewitt: I’ve added another layer to that cause I believe this is more accurate. It’s not about the destination.

Shane Hewitt: It’s not even about the journey. It’s about the company you keep. And if you are with yourself or with others, uh, choose the right people and you better be able to enjoy it.

John or Julie Gottman: Oh, that’s great. I like that.

Shane Hewitt: Thank

Shane Hewitt: you for being my company likewise keep writing, Shane. Thank you for this.

Shane Hewitt: Thank you,

John or Julie Gottman: Shane. Have a wonderful day.

Shane Hewitt: Shane

John or Julie Gottman: Hewitt

Shane Hewitt: and the Night

John or Julie Gottman: Shift.

Shane Hewitt: Download the latest

John or Julie Gottman: from the iHeartRadio app.