← The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Gottman Doctors: Affairs Can Actually Save Your Relationship! But If You See This, It's Time To Walk Away!
02:18:06
Loading summary
Transcript501 lines
- [00:01]
Julie Gottman
This episode is brought to you by JCPenney. And if you've been to JCPenney recently. Yes, JCPenney, you'll know it's becoming the way to find good clothes for prices that still make sense. They've got hidden gems for everyone and every budget with deals and rewards that actually make a dent. If you already shop JCPenney, you feel like you know a secret. But if not, it's time to ask. Wait, am I sleeping on JCPenney? Shopjcpenney.com Yes, JCPenney. When the sex falls away, it can become a serious problem.
- [00:33]
John Gottman
And the largest study done on the quality of sex with 70,000 people in 24 countries found the differences between people who say they have a great sex life have an awful sex life. Has to do with really?
- [00:45]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [00:46]
John Gottman
Doctors John and Julie Gottman are world.
- [00:48]
Stephen Bartlett
Renowned psychologists and researchers who have studied.
- [00:51]
Julie Gottman
Over 40,000 couples, written over 50 books.
- [00:54]
John Gottman
And helped millions of people find and stay in love for over 50 years.
- [00:57]
Julie Gottman
People don't know how to have good relationships.
- [01:00]
Stephen Bartlett
So I've got so many questions. I'll start from the top. What are we getting wrong?
- [01:04]
Julie Gottman
Well, first of all, most people are living under the myth that you have to be compatible with a partner, which is absolutely wrong.
- [01:12]
John Gottman
And this is really interesting. There's a T shirt study where women smell T shirts that have been worn by men for at least two days and selected the ones they thought smooth smelled the best. And they found they were selecting the men that were as most divergent from them genetically rather than people who were like them. Because we're not really turned on by.
- [01:29]
Julie Gottman
Her clone and there isn't a one. Looking for the one is a big mistake.
- [01:34]
Stephen Bartlett
What about how do I become the most attractive version of me if I'm looking for a partner?
- [01:38]
John Gottman
Yeah, it's a great question.
- [01:39]
Julie Gottman
And this is what you do.
- [01:41]
Stephen Bartlett
This is a difficult question to ask, but have you ever seen cheating help a relationship?
- [01:45]
Julie Gottman
Oh, very, very often. Really, when there's recovery.
- [01:49]
Stephen Bartlett
But can it be treated?
- [01:51]
Julie Gottman
75% so far in our research, how we developed a model, and here's what it involves. First.
- [02:06]
Stephen Bartlett
John, Julie. Why do you both do what you do?
- [02:13]
Julie Gottman
I love that question. One has to define what we do and there are many things that we do. First of all, I love to write. That's great. I've been helping people since I was 8 years old for some odd reason. And I love, love, love connecting with people and loving them through their pain. That's why I do what I do.
- [02:38]
Stephen Bartlett
And would you class Yourself as a clinical psychologist, Is that your official title?
- [02:42]
Julie Gottman
Yes.
- [02:43]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay, John, could you answer the same question, which is why do you do what you do? And I guess, what do you do?
- [02:48]
John Gottman
Well, to me it's really an interesting puzzle to try to understand what makes relationships work and what makes groups work? What makes people be cooperative versus competitive, selfish and mean? What makes them be altruistic and empathetic? What makes relationships become sources of longevity and health versus illness and loneliness and despair. So for me it's a puzzle and it's fun to work on a puzzle.
- [03:24]
Stephen Bartlett
And what do you do?
- [03:26]
John Gottman
I measure things accurately and reliably and you know, then really just kind of see where the data fall out. So it's really applying statistics and measurement and good math to try to understand processes that are going on between people with this really ultimate question of what makes relationships work and what makes groups work? What makes humans cooperative and magnificent at their best versus selfish, greedy and functioning at their worst. So it's curiosity that drives me, that's all.
- [04:09]
Stephen Bartlett
And collectively, how many people do you think you've studied, researched, treated, worked with in your practice over the last however many decades?
- [04:21]
John Gottman
Well, we've done research on 40,000 couples about to start couples therapy using questionnaires and then more intensely using physiology and objective rating of emotional behavior. About 3,000 couples followed over time as long as 20 years.
- [04:40]
Stephen Bartlett
And how many books have you collectively written, Julie?
- [04:44]
Julie Gottman
I think we're on 51, but I'm not sure. I've lost.
- [04:52]
Stephen Bartlett
Where I wanted to start with this conversation is, is really with I guess the subjective relationships, but how we find inform them in the modern society. Because when you look at the stats, despite the incredible work you've done over the last couple of decades, it doesn't seem that we're better at finding and keeping relationships than ever before. Especially if you look at non romantic relationships. You know, loneliness and isolation are at absolute all time highs. And the technology that was invented over the last couple of decades came with a promise which was that it was gonna connect us, but it doesn't seem to have succeeded. So I really want to start by answering this question about how people find love and form those relationships in the modern world and like what the data says and what our psychology says about where we're going wrong. I had some independent research that I found that says According to the U.S. census Bureau, nearly 50% of the U.S. population are currently single. According to the 2023 survey by Pew Research, about 33% of men reported being single, followed by 28% of women. The average first marriage for men is 30 years old. For women, it's about 28. We're having less sex than ever before. We're getting in relationships later than ever before. Marriages still seem to break down. Almost half of them. You probably know those numbers better than me. And almost half of people are using dating apps. But I think if you speak to anybody that uses a dating app, they feel like they're all having a bad time. When we think about finding someone to love us or that we love, how much of our effort should be about actively going out there and putting ourselves out there, buying a new dress, whatever it is, putting ourselves out in the market, versus the internal work of building ourselves into someone that is a magnet instead of a door to door salesman. You know what I mean?
- [06:45]
Julie Gottman
Oh, beautiful, beautiful. Yes. I love your thought about developing ourselves internally. Because that's what goes wrong that makes dating apps so terrible. Many, many people suffer from terrible insecurity, right? They feel shame. They may have been criticized a lot as a kid or in their work, and as a result, they hide out. They hide. And what they present to the world, either through dating apps, this is very common, or just even meeting people at a party is something they're not. It's something that they believe is the ideal. But where are they getting their information? They're getting it from tv, from Hollywood, from idealized heroes and heroines that are not real. Also, they're living under the myth that you have to be compatible with a partner, which is absolutely wrong, as we'll talk about. In other words, you have to have the same interests, the same values, maybe the same background, the same class you were raised in and so on. All of that is wrong, interestingly enough. So when you talk about building that internal world, basically what you're saying is trust your own intuition, trust who you are. People will come to you if you are genuinely yourself. And if you're not, then people may mistake you for somebody else, have an expectation of who you are, and you're an inevitably going to fail that expectation, which then gives you a negative experience because you feel like this other person is rejecting you and doesn't like you. But the reality is they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting this idealized portrait that you tried to present to them, which is real.
- [08:53]
Stephen Bartlett
I guess a lot of people would think when they hear that, but Julie, if I show up as myself, no one's gonna love me.
- [09:01]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, that's right.
- [09:02]
Stephen Bartlett
Especially on a first date.
- [09:03]
Julie Gottman
That's right, that's right. That's you know, that's the sadness. People don't believe, because of all that criticism in the society that they're worthy of love. They don't believe it. They have to, you know, be, I don't know what, Bruce Willis or something in order to. To have somebody attracted to them, have somebody really want to get to know them, which isn't true at all. In fact, it's the opposite.
- [09:36]
Stephen Bartlett
What do you think to that, John?
- [09:37]
John Gottman
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this question of, you know, how do we find true love? And, you know, part of the problem, I think, is that, as you mentioned, loneliness is a very serious thing. And so many people are lonely. And part of what they haven't done is build a friendship network that can support them. Friends are just so important as a precondition for finding the love of your life. Because the research that's been done on strangers now shows that people think that 97% of strangers, if they talk to them, will be rejecting and will feel like they're invading their privacy. But the data shows that just the opposite is true. That when you approach a stranger, almost 97% of the time they're quite delighted to be contacted. And they meet initial contact with interest, enthusiasm. And so talking to strangers turns out to be really a very important thing. And turning a stranger into a friend, turning your social networks into places that are not alienating, that are places where you actually can enjoy human company, is an important prerequisite to dating. So I would say you need to build that friendship network first. And once you're not lonely, you're not desperate, and then you can find somebody much more easily.
- [11:20]
Stephen Bartlett
I think this is a really interesting point, which is you finish there by saying if you're not lonely, you're not desperate. And I was thinking, as you're talking about what the most attractive version of me is to the world, if I'm looking to find a partner, whether I'm a man or a woman, it doesn't sound like a desperate version of me is a very attractive version of me, right? So on this point of attraction, we'll start with you, John, and then we'll go. Cause we started with Julie last time. What do we know about what makes people attracted to each other? Like, how do I become the most attractive version of me to the world if I'm looking for a partner?
- [11:55]
John Gottman
I think everyone is really interesting and attractive as long as, you know, they're with somebody who's curious about them. So if you're with somebody who's really snobby and condescending and superior. Nobody is at their best. But when you're with somebody who's really interested in you, then you can really emerge. And just about everybody is really interesting. Their thoughts are unique and their background is interesting and their goals and their struggles are really fascinating. So I think it's the social context that makes the difference rather than the individual. So the problem with dating apps, I think, is that they create this very artificial situation in which everyone's being evaluated and assessed and they're swiping left all the time. Well, that person's not quite right. Not quite right, not quite right, not quite right. The research of Eli Finkel shows that there's nothing you can measure in two individuals that will predict whether they like each other.
- [13:06]
Stephen Bartlett
There's nothing you can measure.
- [13:07]
John Gottman
Nothing you can measure. In fact, you can actually ask people exactly what they're looking for in a partner and find that exact person in a large database. And it's very unlikely that they'll like that person when they meet them. Yet if you randomly pair them with strangers, 22% of people like each other when they first meet.
- [13:32]
Stephen Bartlett
I wonder about the role that self esteem plays in attraction. It's kind of what we were talking about with being desperate. Maybe they feel like a similar thing. And I wonder if there's any data that supports this idea that self esteem or your self perception is this invisible force that makes you attractive or not attractive. I've actually seen it in some of my friends who I won't name who started going to the gym. And just because they started working on themselves, it's almost like they grew six inches. Like they just were like different people. Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of attraction, we think, like, go get the blow dry, I'll go get a better outfit. But this goes back to this point about how much of it is actually like, do the internal work. What do you think?
- [14:16]
John Gottman
I think there's a lot to be said for that. Yeah. If you have a group of friends, you know, who really like you and you really like them, then it's easier to emerge. And you know, this dating situation is so artificial that people are so terrified, you know, when they meet somebody and instead of approaching them with curiosity about them, they're worried that they won't make a good impression and they're so self conscious of themselves rather than being curious and interested in the other person. And because if they're curious and interested in the other person, you know, it doesn't matter what happens. Right. I mean, you meet Somebody new, and you learn about them, and it's an interesting experience, and maybe they're interested in you, too. So the dating experience is just kind of fun. You know, it's about exploring two people exploring one another. And then there's no objective. There's no. There's no real goal there. And then it's much less artificial. And then when you meet somebody you really click with, that's a wonderful experience. And especially when you meet an outlier like I met Julie. I dated 60 women before I met Julie. She's number 61, as you like to tell us. I had a database, so I knew I met an outlier. For me, she was an outlier because I just loved interacting with her. It was just so much fun. And she was head and shoulders above any person I'd met before.
- [15:54]
Stephen Bartlett
Do you know what's interesting, though? When people look at you two and when they look at other relationships, they'll go, okay, John, I get it. So you got to make a database. You've got to wait till the. You find the one, right? And this is often the cause of much procrastination as it relates to love. Everyone's looking for the Julie. You know, there's only to one.
- [16:11]
Julie Gottman
You know, that's one of the other myths. There isn't a one. And it's funny because we've seen this in our research on the opposite end of it. And here's what I mean. Every pairing of people, no matter how wonderful they are, no matter how much you love them, the two of you will always have perpetual problems between you. And those are based on either lifestyle preference differences or personality differences, always. And at some point, those conflict. And so, you know, what we saw in our research was, you know, something like 69% of the conflicts that couples suffer from or have are perpetual problems. They never go away. So. So, you know, when I have somebody coming into my office that says, I want to find my soulmate, my soulmate, it's like, huh, What's a soulmate? You know, I mean, out of whatever in the US we had, what, 350 million people? There's probably 500,000 of them that you would find wonderful and attractive, right? So looking for the one is a big mistake because inevitably they snore at night or, you know, they eat with their mouth open or, you know, something that drives you crazy. So, okay, so you're not looking for the perfect person. You're not the perfect person. And that's what I was referring to earlier, as, you know, let's see each other as human beings. There is no perfection. We are all flawed. We all have cracks in us, and those can be seen as beautiful, too. We don't have to be perfect to be loved. Right?
- [18:09]
John Gottman
Yeah.
- [18:09]
Julie Gottman
Right.
- [18:11]
Stephen Bartlett
It's interesting because that marries to something that I was reading about in your books where you talk about how we're often attracted to people who are very different from ourselves, and just the very nature that they're different from us means that there's gonna be that pretty much constant conflict. Why is it the case that we're attracted to people that are different from ourselves? Is that true? Because it doesn't seem to make sense on the surface. You'd think I would be attracted to someone that likes Manchester United and, you know, like, my favorite food and my favorite stuff, because then we'll get on like a house on fire. But you're telling me that we're attracted to people that like.
- [18:42]
John Gottman
Yeah. The research of cla Wedekin is so interesting that this T shirt study that he did where women smelled T shirts that had been worn by men for at least two days and selected the ones they thought smelled the best, they actually were selecting. What Wedican found was they were selecting T shirts of men. Those pheromones were attractive. The men were as most divergent from them genetically, just in the genes of the immune system. Very divergent kinds of people smelled really attractive to these women rather than people who were like them. And actually, the experiment was done. It showed they actually liked those men better than other men they might have met. So genetically different men, genetically different in terms of the immune system. So here's this evolutionary explanation of why people are searching for somebody who's really different. Because we're not really turned on by our clone. We're not turned on by people who are just like us. Julie and I are vastly different. She's this adventurer, this outdoors person. She loves the trees and hiking up mountain trails. I'm an indoorsman. I like sitting in my chair and reading books. Books on mathematics and quantum mechanics and general relativity theory.
- [20:11]
Julie Gottman
He's a consummate indoorsman.
- [20:13]
John Gottman
So we're very different.
- [20:14]
Stephen Bartlett
But what's the evolutionary reason, then, do you think, for why we like people that are different?
- [20:19]
Julie Gottman
Oh, the genetic immunity. So remember, it's all about reproduction, Right? So if you've got two very divergent sets of genetic in terms of the immune system, that child is going to have a broader genetic base as their immune system, as opposed to two identical or close to it, where they'd have a very Narrow genetic base for immunity.
- [20:52]
Stephen Bartlett
Is there anything else that. If you were advising me, if I was a single man and I was saying, okay, how do I find a partner? What should I be doing or looking for? Should I make a list of things that I'm looking for? Should I be. I don't know, you said earlier about being my authentic self as much as I can be, because you don't want people to be attracted to your mask. But should I be making a list like, what should I be going for? Is there qualities that are enduring as it relates to success in romance that everyone should be looking for? Should I lower my expectations?
- [21:25]
Julie Gottman
It's not about qualities. It's about. Well, I hate to say it, but it's more about behavior. So, for example, and I have so many, particularly women who've been divorced and now they're dating, and they ask that question. And here are several of the things that I always tell them. One is, does the person, male or female, ask you questions about yourself? When? Or do they broadcast? Do they just tell you who they are? Oh, my God, my boss just gave me a promotion. Oh, my. You know, aren't I cool? Or I just won this athletic competition? No. Are they asking you questions about yourself? And not only that, but listening to the answers, right? And taking in the answers and. Oh, that's interesting. That's one. Another is, you know, our society is very striated, right? So how do they treat people who have, let's say, less social status than they do? How do they treat the waitress who comes to their table? Do they treat them with disdain or scorn or, you know, the steak is terrible, take it back. Or are they kind? Do they treat them like human beings? That's another thing. Do they treat people equally or do they only treat a certain group with respect and the others not? So that's number two. Number three is, are they reliable? Do they do what they say they're going to do? If they say they're going to call you, do they call you? If they say, I'll pick you up at 8, are they there at 8? So reliability is a big deal. And of course, nobody can be perfectly reliable. You know, life happens. But do they call you to let you know, oh, I ran into heavy traffic, so I'll be 20 minutes late. So, you know, there's a consideration there of your time, of your energy, curiosity, as John pointed out, as to who you are. And also there are so many people who, as you have been talking about, are so terribly lonely. Watch out for this. Watch out for people saying in the first date, oh, my God, you're it. You're the answer. Oh. Oh, my God, you're fantastic. I think I love you. You know, that kind of rush into, let's have an intimate relationship right now. I want to marry you, and I'm going to ask you tomorrow. No. You know, people need to take their time to get to know one another and peel away the layers slowly and carefully to build trust.
- [24:33]
Stephen Bartlett
Do you think that speed to rush into a relationship is a sign of something else further, farther upstream, maybe insecurity or.
- [24:40]
Julie Gottman
You bet. Needy. And I don't like the word needy, because everybody has needs. We're pack animals. We need each other. We depend on each other. But somebody who can contain themselves, as you were pointing out, with or without you.
- [24:59]
Stephen Bartlett
Energy.
- [24:59]
Julie Gottman
That's right. And have done that internal work so, so that they're not looking to you to answer every problem they have.
- [25:10]
John Gottman
You know, I would give different advice to, to a male who's, who's dating. I, I would say, you know, just have fun. You know, meet people. Like when I was creating my database, you know, I, I met a woman who was a survivalist. She had a.38 Magnum pistol right by her by her bedside. And she spent thousands of dollars on gowns to go to opera because she loved opera. And I remember sitting there in her house and saying, you know, God, this is really interesting. You know, I, I, I don't know if I like this person or I can be with this person, but she's fascinating. You know, it's kind of fun getting to know her. And then at a certain point, there's somebody you meet. Like I met Julie, and everything feels right. The world just kind of opens up when you talk and your heart opens. And it's very different. It's not just interesting. It's really, there's potential there that you don't feel with anybody else.
- [26:10]
Stephen Bartlett
Were you desperate when you met Julie, though?
- [26:13]
John Gottman
I don't think I was. Oh, I don't think I was desperate. I'd been divorced for about seven years. And I was looking to meet somebody close to my age who was an interesting person. And I met a lot of interesting people, but she was different.
- [26:30]
Stephen Bartlett
I asked this question in part. Cause I wonder if someone's ever done a study where they take a group of people who are looking to find someone, and then they take a group of people who aren't really looking and they see who has the most success. And when I say looking, I mean some people are literally looking for a Husband and they feel like they need to find one within six months. But because, you know, biological clocks and goals they might have for their lives and all these kinds of things versus a group of people that are just open to it. And I wonder who's more attractive.
- [27:02]
John Gottman
I think either one can work.
- [27:04]
Stephen Bartlett
Right.
- [27:04]
John Gottman
You know, really, I don't think there has to be a magic formula. So I think, I think if you approach the whole situation with curiosity and wonder, you know, and just kind of see who we meet and see what happens.
- [27:18]
Stephen Bartlett
But that sounds more like this group here.
- [27:22]
Julie Gottman
That's right. I agree with you. What you're describing is that being confident in yourself and just being curious as opposed to, I really have to find somebody. I need to find somebody very, very, very different.
- [27:41]
Stephen Bartlett
I think about this in part in the context of business as well, because as an investor, you get an energy from the entrepreneur that's trying to get investment from you as to whether they need you or whether you're an option. And it's so remarkable how much more likely you are to invest in a founder who makes you feel like an option. And I think because. And then you have these other founders. Well, I can literally think of one example that popped to my mind from the last couple of weeks where they were so desperate that it was almost rude.
- [28:15]
John Gottman
Wow.
- [28:16]
Stephen Bartlett
How did that manifest as in the way that they sent their emails and the way that they were like demanding and how urgent they wanted to speak to you and all these kinds of things and how like low key, expectant they were from you made me feel like their business wasn't doing well. Whereas, and I think about this in the context of relationships, whereas the founders and entrepreneurs that message me where they're kind of more patient, they, you know, they're kind of, maybe a little bit busier. The ones that have that, like it's. I keep going back to that phrase like with or without you energy, where you're an option to them, you're much more likely to invest. You feel like it's a privilege to invest. And I think about this from the context of the question I just asked. If someone's like, I need a husband now versus someone's like, I'm open, I'm curious. I willing to go on the date and see if we're right because I realize that me saying yes to you is a huge investment. So I need to take my time to figure out if that investment is going to be worthwhile because I respect myself.
- [29:16]
John Gottman
Yeah, maybe you're right.
- [29:17]
Julie Gottman
Right.
- [29:18]
John Gottman
Maybe it's better if you're just kind of confident and not so desperate.
- [29:23]
Stephen Bartlett
Can you fake confidence? Julie, this is the problem.
- [29:27]
Julie Gottman
No, you know, as a matter of fact, when people try to fake confidence, they. They often overstep it, Right? And golly, I know I'll never forget this fellow in high school. He would brag about himself without knowing that he was bragging. He would boast and boast and boast and boast. And I realized, oh, my God, I cannot stand this, you know, because it was so fake. But important thing, I realized that the extremity of my negative attitude towards him was because there was a part of me that was just like that, that felt insecure, that wanted to present, you know, this perfect image to people that I wasn't, which is what he was trying to do. And so then it's like, oh, I've got a little work to do on myself.
- [30:24]
John Gottman
Well, you know, one thing about this dating situation that's interesting is even though there's nothing you can measure in individuals that will predict that they like each other once they get together and start interacting, our lab can measure if that interaction has promise or not.
- [30:44]
Stephen Bartlett
Wow.
- [30:45]
John Gottman
Really? We measure openness, the emotional connection, the fact that people are either connecting with one another, communicating with one another, or not. We measure tension versus relaxation. We measure curiosity and interest and all of those things. Yeah.
- [31:07]
Stephen Bartlett
So can you give me really specifically exactly how a couple would show up, really specifically, if they were. If they had promised to last and be successful together?
- [31:18]
John Gottman
So if you watch their videotape and they had promise, you'd find them laughing together, you know, mirroring each other, smiling, asking questions, being open, wondering about things. And you'd have this real sense of exploration and openness and curiosity and interest in one another. Whereas in a couple that wasn't doing very well, you'd sense this tension, sarcasm, a lot of negativity, bragging about themselves, talking about themselves, rather than being interested in the other person.
- [32:02]
Stephen Bartlett
Body language.
- [32:03]
John Gottman
Body language. The ratio of positive to negative emotion in those couples would be much less than 1, whereas it would be 3 to 1 or 5 to 1among couples who are really getting along very, very well. Where there's this potential, this openness and potential.
- [32:21]
Stephen Bartlett
What's the difference in body language?
- [32:23]
Julie Gottman
Let me demonstrate it. So somebody who's overconfident, pretend he's not sitting here, is just going to be.
- [32:29]
Stephen Bartlett
Doing so that for people that aren't watching, laying back on.
- [32:35]
Julie Gottman
Laying back on your arm, you know, stretched out over the top of the chair next to you, you're leaning back you know, which is, come to me, come to me.
- [32:47]
John Gottman
You know, it's all me.
- [32:49]
Julie Gottman
It's all about me, and I'm so cool. And somebody who is really engaged is going to be more kind of leaning forward and making eye contact, being fairly relaxed, you know, not hunching their shoulders inwards, which shows they're probably depressed, they're insecure, they're hiding out, but, you know, just relax. Their shoulders are, you know, not up to their ears. They're allowing their eye gaze to look away as they think about something, and then they look right at you and they answer the question. All of those indicators, that ratio of.
- [33:39]
John Gottman
I to other, I mean, mine, you know, predominates. Conversations where there's all this tension.
- [33:48]
Stephen Bartlett
Say that again, sir.
- [33:49]
John Gottman
Is where, you know, the conversation is really about just myself. I'm sort of putting myself in the center versus being interested in you being interested in us, being interested in we. And that emerges, that openness emerges in language as well.
- [34:08]
Julie Gottman
There's also a reciprocity in the sense that, let's say you and I are meeting, you ask me some questions about myself. I'll answer those questions, but then I'll ask you. I'll come back and ask you questions about yourself as opposed to, go ahead, ask me more questions and more questions and more.
- [34:33]
John Gottman
So I'm only happy when I'm talking about myself.
- [34:36]
Julie Gottman
Right, right. So, you know, you're going back and forth, exhibiting that curiosity as opposed to just adoring somebody, being curious about you, but not reciprocating by being curious about them.
- [34:54]
Stephen Bartlett
I. It's funny, because you were talking about body language a second ago, and many people will click on episodes on YouTube or podcasts that try and teach us body language. But I. I think, okay, you can learn some of the things. But really, again, I think body language is a symptom of what's going on inside.
- [35:12]
Julie Gottman
How do you build confidence is really the question, you know, especially when you begin, let's say, in a family or with caretakers who are critical and contemptuous of you. And when you have that from practically the ground up, as I did, you internalize that, and you believe you're worthless because you were treated as worthless. So how do you build the confidence? Right. So either through maybe therapy, through looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, all right, this is who I am. This is who I am. This is who I am. You know, one of us. I used to like almost every single woman, no matter how beautiful you are, you will always measure yourself as inferior to somebody else. Always. As a woman, I mean, you've seen already 6 million images of idealized women by the time you're 18. Think about that. So how do you build confidence in what you look like? Go to a locker room where women are undressing and look at their real bodies and notice the variety. Notice, you know, the whatever woman that's larger than the standard, thinner than the standard. Women come in all shapes and sizes. So do men. And just seeing the reality, the reality, as opposed to the photoshopped, that's the thing that is so difficult about technology, is that these days, you know, especially with dating apps and so on, people are photoshopping their images or they're taking an image of themselves 30 years ago. And there, here is what I am, and I actually still have hair. It's the reality that it's not really about the appearance. It's not even about, you know, the IQ or whatever or the education. It's really about the. Well, here we go. It's about the heart. It's about the heart. Is this a kind person? Is this a caring person? Is this a person who exhibits compassion, who treats people equally and so on?
- [37:45]
Stephen Bartlett
A dating app wouldn't work on that basis, would it?
- [37:48]
Julie Gottman
No. And most people are lying on dating apps, too. That's right.
- [37:53]
Stephen Bartlett
Is there a difference in what men and women look for in a partner as it relates to attraction when they first meet?
- [38:02]
John Gottman
Well, you know, that's an interesting question, because I remember reading this paper by Eli Finkel. He says in the introduction, you know, generally the dating research suggests that men are looking for physical beauty and women are looking for occupational competence and wealth. But actually, when he did this really elaborate speed dating study, none of that actually manifested in people's preferences. The preferences were all in terms of what it felt like to be together. And both men and women were really similar. So when you interact with somebody, you're going to interact with them for five minutes. And this speed dating situation, what made the difference was how much fun it was to interact with them for five minutes, how enjoyable it was. And men and women were the same. So the social context of dating is so important because if it's this very tense, evaluative context, nothing is going to work. But if it's this relaxed, sort of interested, curious context, almost everything's going to work.
- [39:18]
Stephen Bartlett
Now, a lot of dating happens these days with alcohol in a nightclub or with alcohol at maybe dinner or at a bar. Is there a better place to conduct a first date? And if so, why?
- [39:30]
Julie Gottman
Well, first of all, alcohol distorts Everything. Drugs distort everything. You know, there's a reason they say intoxicated, toxic. Alcohol is toxic. So it shuts down certain parts of the brain. Shuts down to some degree. Your ability to judge, your ability to sense, your reflexes, your intuition, all that stuff is shut down to some degree. And so, wow, she's really hot. I'm gonna go for her. You know, you're not picking up that. You know, she's wearing a wedding ring. She's sitting with a man who has a match and wedding. You know, you're not picking up all that stuff. So probably a coffee shop is nice where we met.
- [40:20]
John Gottman
Yeah. Well, I think it needs to be a context that is not evaluative. You know, I think it has to be some kind of relaxed context where you're just kind of getting to know one another. Yeah. And seeing what it's like to meet this person. So it's the judgment that makes it tense and uncomfortable. And so people need alcohol to get relaxed. And of course, then they're, you know, or they get high and they're laughing at everything and nothing. And there's no con. There's no connection. There's no real connection. So the evaluative context is the. Is kind of like the. The antidote to love. You have an evaluative context. You know, you're trying to be at your best, the other person's trying to be at their best, but, you know, there's no real interest in one another.
- [41:15]
Stephen Bartlett
When you say evaluative context, it means that we're evaluating each other. It's really. Really a very. That's right. It's like an interview, basically.
- [41:22]
John Gottman
Yeah, it's like. It's like a job interview.
- [41:25]
Stephen Bartlett
Interesting.
- [41:25]
John Gottman
Never gonna work.
- [41:28]
Stephen Bartlett
Is there a certain age where if you get together with someone, you're more likely to be successful? I was talking to my friend about this, actually, this weekend. Cause he is approaching 40 and his partner is significantly younger. It's my friend that lives in America, in New York, and he was telling me that because she's sort of 23, he's struggling a little bit because he wants to settle down. And he wants to think about kids now. And she's still trying to figure out life. So it made me wonder if maybe he should be aiming at people that are at least that sort of 30 age where you start. You know, I don't know if there's.
- [42:01]
Julie Gottman
Any research to, you know, I don't know about the research, but what I've seen clinically is that people who date others that are very, very different in age from them have a problem typically, because first of all, the social history in which they were raised is different. Right. So, for example, John and I, though we're not the same age, we're about nine years apart, but we both went through Vietnam, we both went through all the assassinations in the US Civil Rights movement. The Civil Rights movement, you know, I got arrested, he didn't. I was unlucky, you know, in the protesting stuff. But, but that context, you know, understanding a period of history that you grew up in is really important. And also internally in the sense that there are really phases of development that you go through as you get older. And you're absolutely right, Stephen, in that a 40 year old who wants to now settle down, create a home, create a family and a 23 year old are incredibly different developmentally. So their goals will be different, their values will be different, if you will, their maturity will be different, their interests also may be strikingly different. There may be a real difference in valuing commitment and so on. So I've seen relationships work with that kind of disparate age, but typically that can happen more easily when you're older, when you've already created your identity, you've already identified what, what profession or line of work you want to do, whether or not you want to have kids or if you've already had kids and so on. So like a 40 year old and a 50 year old or 55 year old would be very different than a 40 year old and a 23 year old.
- [44:11]
Stephen Bartlett
Good enough relationships. Should I be looking for? Because this goes back to what I was saying earlier about, you know, looking for the one, looking for your Julie, or, or should I be looking for a relationship that is good enough and then try and build it to be a great relationship? Because there's a lot of people that are maybe over 30 years old, over 40 years old, who are single, struggling to find someone that's great. And so they, their friends or their partners or, you know, the people around them are saying just, you know, that person's good enough, that person's good enough, just, you know, give them a chance and go on the date.
- [44:47]
John Gottman
And yeah, I think, I think there's a lot to that point of view because when, you know, when you're looking for the perfect relationship that's good in every dimension, you're going to be disappointed. And I think, I think it makes some sense to look for what's good enough. And so, you know, what's good enough for one person is not the same as what's good enough for another person. I know what's good enough for me is having somebody you can really trust and really feel a sense of commitment toward. And those two dimensions are absolutely critical.
- [45:30]
Stephen Bartlett
Did you have non negotiables, both of you? Was there anything on your list of things that were mandatory in finding your partner?
- [45:39]
John Gottman
Yeah, for me it was wanting children.
- [45:42]
Stephen Bartlett
So that's a non negotiable for you?
- [45:44]
John Gottman
Yes.
- [45:45]
Stephen Bartlett
Was there anything else that was non negotiable?
- [45:49]
John Gottman
Monogamy.
- [45:50]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay.
- [45:51]
John Gottman
Yeah, for me.
- [45:52]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [45:54]
Julie Gottman
Sense of humor was really important. I think another thing too is do you get bored talking to them or not? Or are they continually interesting to you? But I think one of the most important things is how do they make you feel about yourself? Not just you're attracted to them or whatever, but how do they make you feel about yourself? If they make you feel dumb or unkind or too needy or whatever, not cool. On the other hand, if they make you feel like the most gorgeous thing in the world and the most brilliant person in the world, et cetera, and you know you're not, that's not it either, you know. So do they recognize you? It's almost like that. Do they recognize you in your fullness of humanity? And you know, that takes time, of course, you have to get to know one another. But let's see.
- [47:09]
John Gottman
I know very quickly. I think we both realize that whenever we spend time together, it's always interesting and fun.
- [47:20]
Julie Gottman
That's true.
- [47:21]
John Gottman
Talking over anything.
- [47:23]
Julie Gottman
That's true. And everything that you said, everything that came out of your mouth was so friggin fascinating. I knew I would be learning from him the rest of my life.
- [47:33]
John Gottman
Yeah, I felt the same way about you, you know, and road. A road trip was an opportunity. It was really a time to talk about our dreams and our hopes, about the world and.
- [47:45]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, what about sex and the role that plays in attraction? I asked this question because I had a relationship when I used to live in New York and I really, really liked this person. We got on all the things you described, the road trips, everything was fun. And then when it came to the point where we had sexual intimacy, it just wasn't there. Yeah, and it was. It was crushing for me because this person was perfect in every conceivable way. Smart, kind, fun, everything. I just. And then the minute we moved to the next stage, it just wasn't there. I just wasn't sexually attracted.
- [48:24]
John Gottman
I've had that experience too.
- [48:25]
Stephen Bartlett
And so it made me add to my list of non negotiables A third thing. At the time, there was two things on that list. The first was they kind of helped me become a better version of myself. And however I want to define that. The second was this intellectual stimulation, the ability to conversate and be interested in them and them interested in me. And the third became not about appearance at all. It was purely a sexual connection because.
- [48:47]
Julie Gottman
Yeah.
- [48:47]
Stephen Bartlett
And so I just wonder the role that sexual intimacy and sexual attraction plays in having a good relationship with someone.
- [48:55]
Julie Gottman
Yeah. You know, I think that really varies, Stephen, because there's a huge range of the importance sexuality plays in individuals. You know, some people are practically asexual. Other people, you know, it's been a really long time if they hadn't had sex in four hours, so. And everything in between. So I think to some degree, that's an individual choice as to how important is sexuality to you and having a wonderful sexual connection as opposed to, who cares, you know, I just want to have a cup of coffee and a pastry, you know, so every individual needs to decide that for themselves, how important it is. And then, you know, if it is important, even of average importance, it's really important. Yeah. But the other thing, too, that's interesting. I mean, we're talking about dating, but I've also seen relationships that have been together for a long time, and the sex falls away, but it's much more important to one person than the other. And they've diverged and it becomes, you know, a pretty serious problem. It didn't start off that way, but it can become that way.
- [50:25]
Stephen Bartlett
And what happens in those scenarios?
- [50:28]
Julie Gottman
Well, you know, typically, it's really interesting, of course, in second. Well, second marriages or relationships at, let's say, over 40 or so, women, especially women going through perimenopause, you know, finishing with menopause, sex hormones go way down. They go way down. And so are they still interested in having sex? Well, they may not be so interested in it that they want to initiate sex, but we're all hardwired in particular ways. So you touch there, you lick there, you stimulate here, and that wiring is going to kick in and the sexuality will kick in again and the sexual responsiveness will kick in. So you can work on that angle, number one. But number two, oftentimes there have been big emotional injuries that have broken trust, that have broken emotional connection. And. Okay, so two theories. One, most men in Western culture are not. They don't accept themselves if they just want to cuddle. That's not masculine. Right. So everybody needs touch. But for many, many Men who bought into that, the only way they can get touch is through sex. They can't just say, will you please just hold me? Women can, because women are considered more vulnerable and softer, and it's okay for them to ask to just be held, but not for men. So, you know, sex becomes a difficult thing there, too, especially with an ultra masculine man where he's just come back from war. He wants to just be held, but he can't ask for that. He's got to be tough and strong and sexy. Therefore, he'll go for sex.
- [52:55]
Stephen Bartlett
Any thoughts on that, Jonathan?
- [52:57]
John Gottman
I, I, I think I agree with you. I, it, it's, it's not negotiable. You know, it's, it's one of these intangible things that, you know, if it's not there, it's not going to work.
- [53:09]
Julie Gottman
Very well in the beginning if it's not there.
- [53:12]
John Gottman
That's right.
- [53:13]
Julie Gottman
Right.
- [53:13]
John Gottman
I mean, it's, Yeah, I think it.
- [53:16]
Stephen Bartlett
Needs to be there because it goes on a journey or relationships.
- [53:20]
John Gottman
Right.
- [53:21]
Stephen Bartlett
It's funny because from doing this podcast and speaking to a lot of sort of sex therapists or couples therapists, this one of them said something to me one day, or maybe two of them said the same point. I think two or three of them said the same point, which is much of what makes sex so, you know, arousing is the spontaneity and the novelness, the newness of it, the excitement of it, all these kinds of things. And they said to me that love is in many respects the opposite of that. It's the opposite of spontaneity. And love is like security and trust and dependability, and it's, you know, knowing someone. So I, I've spoken to a few of my friends, in fact, about this balancing act between, like, I really love this person. I know them and I'm there for them, and we know everything about each other. And then, like, having to fight to also create this excitement, like, how do I, how do I love you? Like, we've known each other for 10 years, and you can trust me and depend on me, but then how do I have sex with you? Like, like we've just met. It's this.
- [54:26]
John Gottman
So we call it the Coolidge effect. Have you heard of this? Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States, and he and his wife were visiting a farm. And, and as the President was led past these chickens and roosters, the farmer said, oh, this rooster has sex 17 times a day. And Mrs. Coolidge wanted me to point that out to you, Mr. President, when she came by here, because we pointed out that rooster has sex 17 times a day. And Calvin Coolidge said, with the same hen? And the farmer said, no, always a different hen. He said. And President said, tell that to Mrs. Coolidge. So the Coolidge effect is that it has to be novel. It has to be exciting to be erotic, right? And familiarity, which creates security and relaxation and openness, is antithetical to the novelty that creates sexual excitement. But the truth is actually not so simple, because eroticism often really results from really creating an erotic situation together and making it an erotic situation. And for women especially, feeling safe and feeling emotionally connected is a prerequisite for feeling really attracted and feeling that this is an erotic situation. That emotional connection is necessary for many women because women have such a strange relationship to safety and fear compared to men. The world is so much more dangerous place for women than it is for men. Women really need that emotional safety and connection in order to feel that the situation is erotic at all. It's important for your audience to realize that the largest study done on the quality of sex with 70,000 people in 24 countries found that the differences between people who say they have a great sex life and people say they have an awful sex life has to do with affection and emotional connection. The people who have a great sex life say, I love you every day and mean it. Kiss each other passionately for no reason at all. Cuddle, they're affectionate, even in public. They have romantic dates. So affection and emotional connection, for most people all over the planet are connected, rather than there being this dichotomy between if you're close and if your friendship is good, sex is going to be terrible, and if you're distant and, you know, and it's novel, sex is going to be great. Just not true.
- [57:26]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [57:27]
Stephen Bartlett
And is there a certain amount of. Because a lot of couples fall into this trap of sort of fake comparison, whether it's social media or movies where we think, okay, if we're not having sex three times a week, something's wrong. I need to raise it. We need to argue about it. We need to fix it. Is there any merit to the quantity resulting in, you know, happiness?
- [57:47]
John Gottman
No. No relationship between quantity and happiness quality. Yes.
- [57:54]
Julie Gottman
Well, with the caveat. With the caveat that if you have two people paired together, one who is extremely sexual and, you know, really does need sex frequently, and the other one, the opposite, asexual, who is more asexual and, you know, could take it or leave it, wants sex maybe once a Month.
- [58:21]
John Gottman
That's not gonna work.
- [58:22]
Julie Gottman
That's not gonna work.
- [58:24]
Stephen Bartlett
One of the things me and my friends have been deliberating about is the importance of what we call desire management, which is if someone is, like, around too much, and they're there every second of every day in the house when I get home, you know, everywhere, does that not to some degree, start to kill the desire a little bit? One of the best things that I think I found in my relationship is that my partner's always working away, then I'm working away. And so when we see each other, it feels special and interesting. But I personally don't know that if we were both in the house seven days a week and I worked from home with her, whether the desire would be the same, I don't know.
- [59:05]
Julie Gottman
You know, I think that, for example, John and I are around each other seven days a week, and we have been for, you know, most of our marriage, but it doesn't matter.
- [59:17]
Stephen Bartlett
Is that because of my attachment style? Maybe? Because, you know, I wondered if that.
- [59:22]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, yeah, could be. Could be.
- [59:24]
John Gottman
I need a lot of solitude.
- [59:28]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, but you are around each other. Yeah, but you're around each other most of the time.
- [59:33]
Julie Gottman
Well, we are, but. But, you know, in a house where there's enough space in the house to not be in visual contact with the other person all the time.
- [59:44]
John Gottman
Right.
- [59:45]
Julie Gottman
You see? So he's downstairs, I may be upstairs, something like that. Or I can maybe hear him, maybe not. He can hear me, maybe not, you know, So.
- [60:00]
John Gottman
I think there is something wonderful about being a part and then coming together. That reunion after you've been apart for a while is really quite delicious.
- [60:10]
Julie Gottman
You know what, though? This is so interesting. I. I am working with an individual right now, and they're both artists. They both travel a whole bunch all the time, and whenever they reunite, after one of them is gone, nothing. There's nothing for about two or three days, and then they have to get into the same rhythm again.
- [60:37]
Stephen Bartlett
Someone said to me on this podcast, they said, you have to spend 90 minutes a week talking to your partner, and if you don't. And the person actually said to me, if you don't get that into your dumb skull, you'll be spending much more time with them in divorce court. And.
- [60:50]
Julie Gottman
Wow.
- [60:50]
Stephen Bartlett
I know. It was a. It was a brash thing to say, but I reflected on it, and it really helped me, because I think. I don't know. I'm speaking as a man, so I can't speak for all men. I can't speak for women, but Speaking from as a man, myself, and also on behalf of my friends with my own attachment style, I think that's important to add. I struggle with, naturally, with conflict resolution because conflict resolution to me sounds like blame. So if my. When my partner says we need to talk, I'm like, oh my God, what have I done now?
- [61:25]
John Gottman
That's right.
- [61:25]
Stephen Bartlett
What have I done now? And I sit there like a, you know, I feel like it's a kid in school being told off by their, like the headmaster or the child being told off by their mother. I'm like, go on, tell me all the ways that I'm inadequate. But the framing of this idea of you're going to have to spend 90 minutes a week sitting with each other and talking regardless helped me because he then went on to say, because if you do that, then you can get to play.
- [61:47]
John Gottman
Well, here's my invention. I have a notebook in my back pocket.
- [61:52]
Stephen Bartlett
Oh, yeah, interesting.
- [61:52]
John Gottman
And it's just designed for when Julie says, we need to talk. And I take out the notebook and a pen and I say, okay, talk to me. I'm taking notes. I want to know what's going on. And she'll tell me, I'm disappointed in you or angry, you know, I mean, whatever she says, you know, I write it down and reflect it back and see if I understand what she's saying. And so I think it's not just 90 minutes. It's 90 minutes when you're willing to listen non defensively, which is not easy. That's not easy. That's really the work in relationships is being non defensive.
- [62:34]
Julie Gottman
But that's why we wrote Fight. Right? You know, and when we gave, you know, a talk, it's really so important to not do that. You, you, you, you blaming that. Blaming. It's, you know, I feel about what? What's the situation? Not, you know, the way you failed me. It's the situation.
- [63:02]
Stephen Bartlett
Julie, is it, is it more often men or women that are saying that?
- [63:06]
Julie Gottman
I feel, Are you kidding? Men are catching up. But it's hard, it's hard for men to do that. Women, I mean, you go to mental health expertise and all the characteristics of a man that are considered mentally healthy. Autonomy, independence, strength, resilience. Resilience. You know, all the stuff that's autonomous for women. Vulnerability, sensitivity, empathy, expressing emotion. So, you know, there's only one emotion that men are allowed to really openly express. Anger. Right. Can they express fear? Oh my God, I'm so scared of going in there tomorrow. Or sadness or, you know, the more vulnerable emotions It's God, think about it, it's seen as effeminate. And that's supposed to be bad. Why is that bad? Because women are second class citizens, right? So to be allegedly like a woman and express vulnerable emotions is a bad thing because you shouldn't be like a woman. Why not? You know, I mean, so expressing vulnerable emotions, I think men are starting to catch up, you know.
- [64:42]
Stephen Bartlett
Don't women like strength?
- [64:45]
Julie Gottman
Yes and no. They like strength, but the problem is that they also want to be empathetic too. They want to be, you know, nourishing to their partner. And if their partner is always presenting this facade of strength, they can't get close to them.
- [65:05]
Stephen Bartlett
It's like the opposite of connection.
- [65:07]
John Gottman
Yeah, but you know, we observed eight year olds in playgrounds and if you look at eight year old boys, they'll do run and chase games over a very large distance. And if an emotional event happens, if somebody gets upset, you know, say, what's the matter? Brian says, the leader of the group says I never get the ball. Okay, toss the ball to Brian. Brian gets the ball and they're off and running. They keep the game in play, manage conflict quickly. Look at two, look at girls, they're playing in groups of two or three close to the school building and they're talking about their feelings over and over again. You know, you said that I was a baby, you know, because I had those barrettes that really hurt my feelings. Yeah, well, I, you know, I, I only wear barrettes when, when I was little and now I don't wear them, you know, but that hurt my feelings when you said that. So I, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. They're talking about emotions constantly. And it's like the hopscotch or whatever game they're playing is just an excuse for talking about emotions. For the boys, the most important thing is keeping the ball in play. And conflict gets in the way of that. They resolve it quickly. They're socialized so differently.
- [66:29]
Stephen Bartlett
Is this part of the reason why it feels for many men that they are being held off all the time? Because actually what's happening is their wife is just expressing their emotions and the man never really expresses it. You know, that old sort of slightly problematic phrase which is happy wife, happy life.
- [66:44]
John Gottman
That's right.
- [66:45]
Stephen Bartlett
The reason why that phrase exists is, I would assume is because the man thinks as long as I can keep her from expressing more problems to me, then I'm happy. He like thinks of his responsibility is.
- [66:55]
John Gottman
Just like you ask a man how he's feeling and he says, well, I'm not hungry. I'm not horny. I'm okay. Ask a woman how she's feeling, she says, well, I don't know. There's, you know, the children and there's this and the house and, you know, and there's this tangle of questions that really she has to address when you ask her how she's feeling. There's so many things, and for a guy, it's so much easier.
- [67:20]
Stephen Bartlett
But, John, as men, I think we can both agree that although. Well, I'm speaking for myself here, but although in the moment, going through that conflict resolution, the 90 minutes a week, getting out your notepad, listening is annoying. In the moment, when we zoom out, we realize that if they didn't raise these issues, if they didn't express these issues, this relationship wouldn't be so good.
- [67:42]
John Gottman
That's right.
- [67:43]
Stephen Bartlett
And we'd be in serious problems.
- [67:44]
John Gottman
That's right. They're the managers of Intimacy.
- [67:47]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [67:47]
John Gottman
We need them.
- [67:50]
Stephen Bartlett
Yes.
- [67:51]
John Gottman
We need them to say, steven, we need to talk. Yeah.
- [67:57]
Julie Gottman
Did you see Steven's face? That was so cute. He went, oh.
- [68:01]
Stephen Bartlett
But it's true. I realize it. I realize that this is serving a purpose which is helping me, you know, and it's helping us.
- [68:07]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [68:08]
Stephen Bartlett
So I sit there and I'll listen to, you know, the things that. The things that aren't right. But you're right. My brain is just like me and my friends can sit in silence for eight hours, sat right next to each other, and we'll meet each other, sit in silence for eight hours, leave. Great evening.
- [68:23]
John Gottman
Great evening.
- [68:25]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, we're both, like, doing our own thing, but it's just. I think men are such simple creatures most of the time.
- [68:31]
Julie Gottman
Oh, you are not. That is so not true. You know, one of the things that I've certainly seen in my work, you know, I've been doing clinical work for 50 years, and what I see is that men have exactly the same emotions. They do. They just try to bury them because it's not okay for them to express them. So they just try to shove it down, but open a little door crack, and up it comes.
- [69:01]
John Gottman
Lionel Tiger, who studied men's friendships and women's friendships, said, with alcohol, men get together, they're very physical, and they talk about their feelings an enormous amount. Takes a little alcohol to make it happen.
- [69:17]
Stephen Bartlett
Two women said to me last night that I was Speaking to on WhatsApp, people that I work with in a different company. They were saying to me that their partners often express how they're feeling by just sending songs out of the blue.
- [69:31]
Julie Gottman
Sending songs.
- [69:32]
Stephen Bartlett
Sending songs out of the blue. And I'd never heard of it. Cause one of them said it, and the other woman said, oh, my God, my partner does that too. Which is. Instead of, like, telling me how he feels, he'll send me a song, which is basically a way. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
- [69:45]
John Gottman
He feels. Yeah.
- [69:46]
Stephen Bartlett
And some of those songs are very romantic. And it's like, I love you. You're the best person I've ever found. But instead, he can't vocalize it to her, so he has to send her a Spotify link and say, listen.
- [69:55]
John Gottman
Listen to this.
- [69:58]
Stephen Bartlett
But it's the same thing, right? It's the.
- [69:59]
John Gottman
That's right.
- [70:00]
Stephen Bartlett
Inability to vocalize, which is.
- [70:03]
Julie Gottman
Yep.
- [70:04]
Stephen Bartlett
Difficult for men.
- [70:05]
Julie Gottman
Keep working on it.
- [70:06]
Stephen Bartlett
I am, yeah. I'm, like, progressively getting better, but sometimes I have little relapses if you. If I am very busy in my mind, and then I have to have one of those we need to talk chat. So I think you're right. There needs to be a bit of a ritual around. Like, is this a good time?
- [70:23]
Julie Gottman
That's right, yeah.
- [70:23]
Stephen Bartlett
Will I have your attention or, you know, even being in a different environment?
- [70:27]
Julie Gottman
Well, you can make a date to have a talk like that. When we are giving couples workshops, at the very end of it, we always give recommendations for ways of preserving the changes you're making in the relationship, the improvements. And one of them is called the State of the Union meeting. Right. Where you start with five appreciations of each other. Things you haven't said before that you've noticed that your partner is doing right, and express your gratitude or thanks or your admiration. Then you go into, okay, so what do we need to change? What do we need to improve? And then you finish up with this beautiful question. I just love this question. How can I make you feel loved this week? And that's closure.
- [71:24]
Stephen Bartlett
You mentioned the word there. Gratitude.
- [71:29]
Julie Gottman
Yes.
- [71:30]
Stephen Bartlett
Why is gratitude so important? Being grateful for them and expressing that something that you two both do to each other.
- [71:37]
John Gottman
I think it's indicative of a habit of mind that's really much more important. A habit of mind, where you're noticing what's going right. And feeling appreciative for it. And I. I know I wake up every morning lying next to Julian, think I'm one lucky guy. You know, I've got this wonderful woman, and, you know, life is good. I go through my checklist, everybody's okay. All the people I love are all right. And I'm with her, and I get to see my grandson and my daughter. Life is good.
- [72:17]
Julie Gottman
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think gratitude brings you into the moment. Brings you into the moment, you know, so. And as John pointed out, you're not just looking for what's wrong, you know, or what your partner is doing wrong. You're looking for what your partner is doing. Right. You know, there's been studies. Who was it? Bryson, Robinson, I guess, who looked at unhappy couples versus happy couples. And unhappy. It wasn't that they weren't doing things for one another, but unhappy couples only saw 50% of what their partners were doing for them. The positivity of the positivity. Right. Whereas happy couples were seeing it all time.
- [73:05]
Stephen Bartlett
It's like they're wearing different sunglasses or something.
- [73:07]
Julie Gottman
Yeah.
- [73:08]
John Gottman
Different filters and the negative habit of mind, you know, really puts you in a state of being kind of irritable and grumpy all the time. You're noticing other people are driving badly and, you know, and being careless and making mistakes all the time. That's all you see. Gratitude puts you on a different frame of mind. So you notice actually all the good stuff that's going on.
- [73:35]
Julie Gottman
Right.
- [73:36]
John Gottman
It's more accurate.
- [73:37]
Julie Gottman
Let me draw a parallel. One of the things that I've done in my private practice, I still do is treat cancer patients and their families. And cancer patients, of course, often are facing the possibility of death. So one of the questions, and oftentimes, I mean, the ones who deal with their diagnosis best are people who say, okay, I don't have that long to live. I'm going to reprioritize my life. I'm going to really think about what's most important to me for the six months I have left. So one of the things that I do in my practice with couples who are just racing through life together on parallel tracks, not connecting at all, is to ask them, okay, you know, if you had six months left to live, how would you want to spend it? Who would be the most important people that you would want to draw close to? Who would you not value as much? How would you want to spend that six months? And I first kind of take people into a very relaxed state so their minds are really free to imagine.
- [75:05]
Stephen Bartlett
And what's that doing? Is it helping to crystallize whether they should be with this person or clarify?
- [75:11]
Julie Gottman
Sometimes. But it's more that, oh, my God, you know, I'm wasting my life trying to make more money. Why am I doing that when I've got this love right here? What's more important to me, making more money or creating more love between us. That's what it comes down to oftentimes.
- [75:36]
Stephen Bartlett
When do you know? How do you know when to quit a relationship? How do I know if the relationship I'm in is bad, is not good? Because relationships are incredibly tempting. They tempt us back. They offer comfort, which sometimes necessarily isn't healthy comfort, but they're very hard to leave. And I actually had a conversation with one of my friends recently. I always talk about my friends because it's the only way I know to draw on case studies. So instead of me just hypothetical, coming with some things hypothetical, I think about the challenges my friends face and got a particular friend who's been in a relationship for many, many years, seven, eight years relationship is broken, broken down. And he naturally, because the relationship has broken down is like jumping to repair. But I wonder if he should even repair because they've broken up six times. They've gone through this cycle six times. So I'm like, are they just rushing back together for the comfort of the relationship?
- [76:33]
Julie Gottman
Or.
- [76:35]
Stephen Bartlett
Should they, you know, take a moment to say, is this even right? But this also the answer here applies to people that are in relationships that have those thoughts in their mind. Is this the right one? How do you know? How do you know if this is a problem we can solve and should solve, or this is just the wrong person?
- [76:52]
Julie Gottman
Therapy helps. Has your friend gone to therapy? Would therapy.
- [76:57]
Stephen Bartlett
Not with their partner, no.
- [76:59]
Julie Gottman
Then they don't know, you know, in other words, a lot of people don't know how to deal with conflict. For example, Nobody's taking Relationships 101 in high school. Right. To learn how to deal with conflict or to learn how to be more vulnerable to somebody else and be more open and so on. So people don't know how to have good relationships. That's part of what drives the work that John and I do. People just don't know how to do it. And if they did know, they could change those patterns. And so with your friend, for example, oftentimes when people have been together for over a couple of years, they create patterns that are like dark holes. They're like black holes that have this tremendous gravitational pull. And so they keep sinking down into the same patterns over and over and over and over again. Right.
- [78:02]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, this is exactly what.
- [78:03]
Julie Gottman
That's your fault. But you can change those patterns once you know and practice what the alternatives are.
- [78:15]
Stephen Bartlett
Oh, okay.
- [78:15]
John Gottman
Well, I think it's not the partner.
- [78:18]
Julie Gottman
The pattern.
- [78:19]
Stephen Bartlett
An alternative pattern.
- [78:20]
Julie Gottman
Yes.
- [78:21]
John Gottman
I think when that fondness and admiration system. You know, the system of affection and respect, love and respect is gone and gets replaced by denigration, belittling, contempt. That's the time to bail.
- [78:36]
Stephen Bartlett
And you've seen this in your work?
- [78:37]
John Gottman
Oh, yeah.
- [78:38]
Stephen Bartlett
This is like. Much of what you guys are known for is this. And whenever I hear people talking about the Gottmans, they're always talking to me about the idea of contempt and the Four Horsemen.
- [78:47]
Julie Gottman
For anyone that doesn't see those things can change, too. Those things can change, too. That often is what constitutes the bad pattern. Or there's been so much of that that now they avoid each other altogether, and there's huge emotional distance.
- [79:05]
Stephen Bartlett
What are the Four Horsemen, then? Before we talk about how we would go about changing, if possible, these things. For anyone that doesn't know and how you found these four Horsemen.
- [79:14]
John Gottman
Well, Bob Levinson and I, when we doing our research, the first thing we looked at was, what's the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a conversation?
- [79:25]
Stephen Bartlett
So how did you conduct this experiment, really?
- [79:28]
John Gottman
Just observing couples talking about how their day went?
- [79:31]
Stephen Bartlett
How did you.
- [79:32]
Julie Gottman
Wait, wait, wait. Bring them into the lab?
- [79:35]
Stephen Bartlett
First of all, what's the lab?
- [79:37]
Julie Gottman
The lab was a room where they sat facing one another. There were video cameras here and there that were focused on each individual and their faces and their body language. There was what was called a giggleometer, how much they moved in their chairs. You know, how much the chairs moved. Physiological measures, what was happening to their heart rate, you know, as well, velocity, respiration, respiration, conductance, and all of that. All of that data that was pulled from those measures was all synchronized, you know, hundredth of a second by hundredth of a second. And they would talk for, let's say, 15 minutes about the events of the day. And then they were asked to talk about a problem they hadn't solved and to try and solve it or talk about it so that, you know, ends up being conflict.
- [80:35]
John Gottman
And then a positive topic.
- [80:38]
Julie Gottman
And then a positive topic.
- [80:40]
John Gottman
Or in the apartment lab, they just hung out for, you know, 12 hours before they went to sleep, and the cameras just rolled while we collected physiological data. So that ratio.
- [80:51]
Stephen Bartlett
You really spied on them? You really spied on them?
- [80:53]
John Gottman
We spied on them. Right.
- [80:54]
Julie Gottman
Except they knew they were being spying.
- [80:56]
Stephen Bartlett
For 12 hours, you watched them just sort of chill and hang out together. Couples.
- [80:59]
John Gottman
That's right.
- [81:00]
Stephen Bartlett
How many couples have you.
- [81:01]
John Gottman
130.
- [81:02]
Stephen Bartlett
And how many couples have been in the Lab in total?
- [81:04]
Julie Gottman
3,000.
- [81:05]
Stephen Bartlett
3,000.
- [81:06]
Julie Gottman
And they were followed. You know, so then they'd be brought Back every couple of years.
- [81:11]
John Gottman
Right. To see how the relationship changed.
- [81:16]
Julie Gottman
Right. So the procedures would be repeated every couple of years for as long as 20 years.
- [81:22]
Stephen Bartlett
And what did you find?
- [81:23]
John Gottman
So that initially, that ratio of positive to negative interaction, even talking about how their day went, or especially during conflict, for people who are in happy, stable relationship, it averaged five positives for every negative.
- [81:40]
Stephen Bartlett
Positives about the other person or about.
- [81:42]
John Gottman
No, just positive emotion.
- [81:44]
Julie Gottman
Like, let's describe positives. So a positive can be nodding your head, it can be smiling, it can be asking a question.
- [81:53]
John Gottman
Affection, humor, validation, showing interest, interest in the other person. Negative would be anger, irritability, disappointment, hurt, disgust, contempt. Shared humor was another big positive that turned out to be very important. So that ratio of positive to negative averaged 5 to 1 in relationships that were stable and happy.
- [82:18]
Julie Gottman
During conflict.
- [82:19]
John Gottman
During conflict and 0.8 to 1 in relationships that were headed for disaster, either splitting up or being together unhappily. But certain negatives were much more predictive of relationship demise. And they were criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling.
- [82:42]
Julie Gottman
So let's define what those are. So criticism means blaming a problem on a personality flaw of your partner. Like, you're so lazy, you'd never think to clean up the kitchen, wouldn't you? Or God, you're thoughtless. You didn't even call me when you were going to be late. You know, thoughtless, lazy, inconsiderate, always selfish.
- [83:03]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay, so making it about their personality and their character.
- [83:07]
Julie Gottman
That's right. That's a criticism. Contempt is the worst. That's sulfuric acid for a relationship where you're looking down your nose with disgust as well as criticism of the partner.
- [83:22]
John Gottman
Superiority.
- [83:23]
Stephen Bartlett
So give me an example of that.
- [83:25]
John Gottman
You're such an idiot. You know, you just never get things right. You know, it's just. You're just not like me, you know, I. I'm thoughtful and considerate. You're just. You're just.
- [83:38]
Julie Gottman
You're stupid.
- [83:38]
John Gottman
You're a narcissist.
- [83:40]
Julie Gottman
Right.
- [83:40]
John Gottman
You know, Right.
- [83:41]
Julie Gottman
So there, there's the criticism, but it's making yourself superior to that other person. And there's a little disgust in it. You know, snide kind of stuff.
- [83:53]
John Gottman
Sarcasm is a good example. Mockery.
- [83:57]
Stephen Bartlett
Especially in front of people.
- [83:59]
John Gottman
Yeah, right.
- [84:00]
Julie Gottman
Awful.
- [84:01]
John Gottman
So the person says, well, I really care how you feel. You really care how I feel. So that's contempt. Stonewalling is really emotional withdrawal.
- [84:13]
Julie Gottman
Don't forget defensiveness.
- [84:14]
John Gottman
And defensiveness.
- [84:15]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, so every defensiveness is the one we all have. It's so hard to get over, which is you know, you either kind of whine like an innocent victim, you know, I did too pay the bills on time. What do you mean?
- [84:30]
John Gottman
Thoughtful. I'm thoughtful.
- [84:32]
Julie Gottman
I am thoughtful. Don't you remember? Blah, blah, blah. Or it's counterattack.
- [84:36]
John Gottman
Oh yeah, you're so perfect, huh?
- [84:39]
Julie Gottman
You never clean up the kitchen. You know, it's that counter attackage.
- [84:43]
Stephen Bartlett
Do you find that insecure people are more defensive?
- [84:46]
Julie Gottman
Sure.
- [84:46]
Stephen Bartlett
I have this like theory that if your self esteem and your self perception of yourself is fragile, then anyone poking at it at all causes such extreme pain that you, like, you live in this state of like, I have never done anything wrong, I can't do anything wrong. And if someone points out something you've done wrong, it's so painful if you're insecure.
- [85:05]
John Gottman
Right. Walking.
- [85:07]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, exactly. It's like playing with like an open wound.
- [85:10]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, it's like you're a walking burn victim. You know, the way I like to describe it, because I've been there, I know what that's like is, you know, the earth. If you take a picture of the earth and the earth has this very thin crust on it and then you go down some layers and in the center is this boiling hot lava, you know, that burns you to death. Well, somebody says to you, why didn't you pay the bills on time? And the earth opens up, you fall through that crack and straight down into that hot lava of self loathing. That is agony, absolute. And you feel like you're getting burned to death. So you can't allow yourself to step into that crack and say, oh God, you're right, I didn't.
- [86:08]
Stephen Bartlett
So you defend, you defend.
- [86:10]
Julie Gottman
Oh yeah, well, I'm the one who does all the bill paying. What are you doing? You know, it's defensiveness.
- [86:16]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, in that case, it sounds like that's fundamentally linked to some kind of trauma because paying the, you didn't pay the bills to the average person would be. Yeah, I know, sorry, my bad. But if that's linked to maybe, I don't know, your childhood where your, your father or your mother or the bullies on the playground told you that you always, you're so forgetful, Steve or Julie, you're the most forgetful person ever. And then they punched you. You could get to, you know, 40.
- [86:38]
John Gottman
Can be.
- [86:39]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, can be, can be. And then stonewalling. This was one that was so fascinating because you could have a pair of people sitting just like this, looking perfectly normal, but you notice that one is completely shutting down, not showing anything on their face, in their body, maybe Looking away or just glazed looking and not saying a word. And that's not for seconds, it's for minutes. And what's actually going on, because these guys, you know, John and his colleagues, measured physiology, is that they feel so attacked that their heart rates are zooming up above 100 beats a minute, which.
- [87:27]
John Gottman
Just sitting here is secreting cortisol and adrenaline massively. And so they're shutting down.
- [87:35]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, it's a terribly. It's going into fight or flight only. You're not facing a saber toothed tiger, you're facing your partner.
- [87:44]
Stephen Bartlett
You said there, Julie, that you could go into that state for minutes or even longer. Yes, but as you were saying that, I was thinking about my friend's relationship, which kind of started this conversation, and whether they should get back together or not. You were totally right when you said there's clearly a pattern because the fact that they're getting back together, then breaking up, then getting back together, then breaking up, then breaking up shows that they don't have the tools to resolve whatever issue they keep smashing into. But much of why, I think, from what I've heard, or at least a symptom of their relationship, is stonewalling. But it, it's not minutes. One of the. One of these. It's months, I think. I think basically I only know this because I was shown some text messages and I looked at the text messages and I was like, oh my God. There's like. Whenever you talk about something that might be a little bit challenging or whatever, or you even ask, how do you think the relationship's going? The other partner is like vacant, like, like vacant nothing. It's like they're not expressing their needs, they're not saying what they feel. They're spiraling in their own mind and then they're just breaking up with you. You know, it's kind of. I don't know whether that's stonewalling, but it's also what you're saying about lacking the tools that was at the heart of the relationship is one partner spirals independently and. And then without you even knowing it, you thought everything was okay, breaks up with you. To give more context as well, this is a homosexual relationship between two men. So, you know, we talked earlier on about the woman, sometimes the instigator of expression of needs.
- [89:13]
John Gottman
Yeah, that's just right.
- [89:15]
Julie Gottman
Oh, that's so sad. So it sounds like both of them have terrible difficulty making themselves vulnerable to the other and saying what they feel. And it may be that if they tried that early on in the relationship, the other one said something very negative to them back that felt punishing in terms of expressing their emotion. And so they made a choice. Oh, God, I can't make myself vulnerable. I'm going to get hurt if I do that. So they shut down.
- [89:56]
Stephen Bartlett
But this point about men not being very good at expressing their feelings, do we, you know, with that in mind and with the knowledge that expression of feelings are good for building connection, how come homosexual relationships with men work? And I don't know, is there any data to show that they last less longer than a relationship where a woman is. Am stereotypically more likely to, you know, talk about the, the challenges and the issues and bridge the connection? Someone's got to have done the research on this subject.
- [90:27]
John Gottman
Well, we've, you know, we've studied gay and lesbian couples and compared them to heterosexual couples as well.
- [90:33]
Julie Gottman
And for 12 years.
- [90:36]
John Gottman
Generally they're less defensive, they have a better sense of humor, and they're, they're mushrooms. Much more gentle in the way they bring up an issue with one another.
- [90:48]
Stephen Bartlett
Men or women, in those homosexual relationships.
- [90:50]
John Gottman
Men and women together, gay men and lesbians are better than heterosexuals and they're much less possessive and domineering as well. Much more of a sense of equality in their relationships.
- [91:06]
Julie Gottman
Well, especially, you know, pre.
- [91:08]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, so do we.
- [91:10]
Julie Gottman
Wait, pause. Pre aids, you know, men gave each other much more autonomy to have sex outside the relationship. Right. But then AIDS kicked in and a lot of that shut down. Now it's opening up again. So they're giving themselves sexual freedom as long as there isn't a lot of emotional connection and falling in love with the third party. Women don't do that nearly as much. They tend to feel very insecure around polygamy, let's say, or polyamory. And so they really are more wanting monogamy with their partners.
- [92:00]
Stephen Bartlett
So am I right in thinking, John, that you're saying that homosexual relationships are better than heterosexual relationships?
- [92:08]
John Gottman
They are better in general. They're better.
- [92:11]
Stephen Bartlett
Do you know if they last longer?
- [92:14]
John Gottman
I don't know that there's data on that. I don't think there are differences in how long they last.
- [92:19]
Julie Gottman
Is that right?
- [92:20]
John Gottman
I don't think there's any differences.
- [92:23]
Julie Gottman
You know, there's another thing too. I mean, again, it depends on what period of history you're talking about. But because being homosexual has been so stigmatized in the past, you know, and there's so much prejudice against homosexuality, there's. First of all, there's more of a sense of community amongst gay men and gay Women, you know, they've. They've connected with one another not just as couples, but as community in order to survive the kind of prejudice they endure out in the heterosexual society. Right. So. And it's been shown, actually, the research has shown this, that when the community really supports the relationship, the relationship does better. So if you've got a community around you that's a consistent community that's really supporting the relationship, that's really going to help you sustain that relationship.
- [93:26]
Stephen Bartlett
And on these Four Horsemen, a word you didn't mention, but I wondered if it fit in there somewhere, is the word gaslighting, which has become quite popular in society. What is gaslighting? How does that show up so in.
- [93:39]
John Gottman
Physically violent relationships that are characterologically violent, where there's a perpetrator and a victim, those kinds of domestic violence, quite often the perpetrator is communicating to the victim that everything about their reality is wrong. They never raised their hand against this person. It's just all imagined. They're basically doing what happened to Ingrid Bergman in that movie Gaslight, where she's married to this. Well, she's married to this guy who tries to convince her that she's mentally ill, that our whole sense of reality is wrong. So he does things like change the order of the pictures and, you know, in the home, steal jewelry that he's given her that, you know, that he says comes from his mother and grandmother. He steals it and then he says, you know, where is it? You know, you lost it. You're so forgetful. And he's constantly sort of making her feel like she's going crazy. There never was a painting there. What are you talking about? There was never a painting there. And she know. And he's actually removed it or he's changed the order of the pictures. He's trying to make her think she's crazy. And even her sense of reality needs him to determine what's real and what's not real. And that's where gaslight comes from.
- [95:16]
Julie Gottman
Let me mention something, because that word, you're right, it's really being bandied about commonly, and people have got it wrong. Speaking of gaslighting. So people, for example, who have a conflict and they have totally different points of view about what happened during the conflict, who remembers it better? And one will say, well, you said this. No, I didn't. I never said that. That they're calling gaslighting, and it's not. That is not gaslighting. So it's being misused in the culture all the time because people always have.
- [96:00]
John Gottman
Two points of view about different perceptions in any situation.
- [96:05]
Julie Gottman
That's right. They have, you know, everybody has their own individual filters. And so they're going to hear some things, not hear other things and distort things and so on. Memory isn't perfect and so they're always going to have two points of view. And people can get locked into struggles over. No, this is the absolute reality of what happened. No, it isn't. This is. And there is no absolute reality. It's all about perception. So people are calling that gaslighting.
- [96:38]
John Gottman
And that's not.
- [96:39]
Julie Gottman
And it isn't. That's not what gaslighting is.
- [96:42]
Stephen Bartlett
At what point does it become gaslighting? Is that when you're intentionally trying to.
- [96:46]
Julie Gottman
Make the other person crazy?
- [96:47]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay. Believe that they're crazy so they don't trust themselves.
- [96:50]
John Gottman
And these violent relationships that, you know, the man will slap the woman across the face and says, God damn it, you just hit me. I never hate you. I never touched you.
- [97:01]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, I spoke to a domestic violence victim once who told me that her partner when after like love bombing her to immediately like, you know, throwing all this affection onto her and you know, very, very quickly, he would then start like hiding her stuff. So he'd put her car keys in the fridge and he'd be like, I didn't. Why did you put your car keys in the fridge?
- [97:20]
Julie Gottman
That's gaslighting.
- [97:21]
John Gottman
Yeah, that's gaslighting.
- [97:22]
Julie Gottman
Perfect description.
- [97:24]
Stephen Bartlett
So then she thinks she's going crazy. So he goes, well, I'm gonna have to take your car keys often. And then she can't. She's lost her car.
- [97:29]
John Gottman
Often done in the service of extreme jealousy.
- [97:32]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [97:33]
John Gottman
And, and socially isolating the victim.
- [97:36]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, we've treated domestic violence a lot. And God, I'll never forget this one guy who had put a mark on the tire and a mark on the driveway that matched up, that lined up. And at the end of the day, if those marks didn't line up, he'd beat her up. Even if she just went to the grocery store. It didn't matter.
- [98:02]
John Gottman
Who did you fuck today?
- [98:04]
Julie Gottman
Right?
- [98:05]
John Gottman
Where'd you go? Nowhere. Oh yeah, right. You liar. You roar, you.
- [98:13]
Stephen Bartlett
This is the typical and naive question people ask when they hear a story like that. Their head goes, I would never stay with someone that did that to me.
- [98:23]
Julie Gottman
Blah, blah, blah. But it not true. Yeah, not true. You know, first of all, it doesn't happen all. Secondly, oftentimes the victim usually, you know, in a hetero, it's a woman has her confidence beaten down. So it's not just physical, it's also mental abuse. God, you're an idiot. Man, are you stupid? And she starts doubting her own judgment, her own intuition. Plus, you know, I don't think you could survive out there. Nobody else is going to want you. And she starts to believe it. Starts to believe it.
- [99:06]
John Gottman
And she also has a dream that he's going to change because he's so remorseful of what he did to her. He promises he'll never happen again. And he loves her and he's going to get this under control.
- [99:20]
Stephen Bartlett
Is he a narcissist, or is it possible that someone who isn't a narcissist can perform that behavior? Or is the word narcissist another word that's just thrown around too much?
- [99:30]
Julie Gottman
Very good. A plus.
- [99:33]
John Gottman
Yeah.
- [99:33]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah, I thought so.
- [99:34]
Julie Gottman
It's another word. You know, everybody is narcissistic, Steven. Everybody is. You know, narcissism basically comes from the instinct for self preservation. You know, you're thinking about, okay, me, what do I need? What do I need? How am I going to get it? And so on. I've got to really, you know, think about taking care of myself sometimes. I mean, they call that a narcissist, but the way it really is meant is shorthand for a narcissistic personality disorder, which is extreme narcissism, where there is no empathy whatsoever. The person has no conscience whatsoever. They can hurt you, they can do everything that damages you, and they take absolutely no responsibility for it and blame you for it. Blame the victim. So somebody who, you know, says, I didn't fail. You made me fail. This is what you did that set me up, you know, blah, blah, blah. So every. Everybody around them is a reflection of who they are themselves. And so they only see people, other people in two dimensions.
- [101:04]
Stephen Bartlett
How'd you go about. You said you spoke to couples and women who had been through domestic abuse and, you know, how do you go about helping them?
- [101:15]
Julie Gottman
Okay, there's two types of domestic violence. John mentioned characterological domestic violence. That's when there's a clear perpetrator, clear victim. Nothing the victim can do will change violence. There's major injury. So what has to happen there is. The victim has got to get out of the relationship because she could be killed.
- [101:43]
Stephen Bartlett
Easier said than done, right?
- [101:45]
Julie Gottman
It is. That is correct. It is very, very hard. It has to be secretive. You know, she's got to plan it, especially if there are kids and so on. But there's also. That's only 20% of the domestic violence out there, only 20%, 80% of the domestic violence is what we call situational domestic violence. And in that kind, both people tend to be violent. Both the violence is not seriously injuring of the other person. It's a slap, it's a push, it's a holding, you know, holding them from moving, you know, that kind of thing, pushing them down, breaking things, breaking things, throwing things at them and so on. And that results from moving into that flooded state we described earlier, where you're in conflict, your heart rate is jumping up over 100 beats a minute, you go into fight or flight, and when you do that, you lose access to, to your ability to problem solve, your ability to listen, actually to really take in what the other person is saying. You hear attack, attack, attack, no matter what the person is saying. Because it's like your frontal cortex, your prefrontal cortex is offline. So both people typically are getting flooded during conflict. So those people, we can really, really help.
- [103:28]
John Gottman
So we've done a randomized clinical trial treating those people and even a year and a half after treatment has ended, when they discuss a conflict on videotape in their home. And we measure physiology, physiology stays low, so the therapy is really effective compared to a control group.
- [103:48]
Stephen Bartlett
If you're someone running a business today, that means you're probably operating in a world that doesn't sit still. Tariffs and trade policies are dynamic, customer expectations shift constantly, and the pace of innovation is relentless. So your margin of error is becoming increasingly smaller. Making decisions without full visibility across your business is not only risky, but it inevitably slows down everything. And I see it all the time. Businesses with the right ideas, but they're stuck because they're spread across five systems that don't talk to each other. Many of my companies now use our sponsor, Netsuite by Oracle, which has an AI powered business management suite that allows you to see your business more clearly. Everything from financials to HR to operations lives in one place. So instead of chasing information, you've got it all in front of you. It operates in real time, so you can forecast with assurance, spot problems before they even become problems, and generally move faster without blind spots. If your business is generating seven figures or more, there's a free ebook that's worth your time reading. It's called Navigating Global three Insights for Leadership. And you can download it now from NetSuite.com Bartlett that's NetSuite.com Bartlett I'll link it below. Life is a workout and Smoothie King is here to help you power through. Whether you're crushing morning miles or sprinting through back to back meetings. Give your body the energy, protein and power it needs to help you conquer your goals. Only at Smoothie King is this part of the reason why you're in the UK at the moment. You talked about you.
- [105:14]
Julie Gottman
Yeah. Trauma.
- [105:15]
Stephen Bartlett
Oh, it's trauma.
- [105:16]
Julie Gottman
It's trauma at Oxford. Yeah, we're talking about trauma.
- [105:20]
Stephen Bartlett
And also affairs.
- [105:22]
John Gottman
Affairs.
- [105:22]
Stephen Bartlett
Talking about affairs. You're talking about treating affairs, right?
- [105:25]
Julie Gottman
Right, that's right.
- [105:27]
Stephen Bartlett
So I've never really heard the, the phrase treating affairs as if it's a, you know, a condition per se, but you're. If. If there has been an affair or some form of infidelity, can it be treated?
- [105:41]
Julie Gottman
75% so far in our research cure rate.
- [105:47]
Stephen Bartlett
And when you say affair, what are you throwing in that bucket? In terms of the definition of an affair, is that a text or is that.
- [105:54]
John Gottman
It can be an emotional affair as.
- [105:55]
Julie Gottman
Well as a sexual affair, a physical.
- [105:58]
Stephen Bartlett
Affair, a physical affair. Sex.
- [105:59]
Julie Gottman
Yeah, it usually. So it can be emotionally, you know, falling in love with somebody else without physical consummation or physical consummation with somebody that you've fallen in love with or just having sex outside the relationship, not an emotional connection, but just having sex. When the agreement is monogamy.
- [106:27]
John Gottman
So almost always involves deception, right?
- [106:31]
Julie Gottman
Always. It always does. Yeah. That's a big part of it is the deception and broken trust. You know, what affairs do is they turn the hurt partner's world upside down. Everything they believed about the partner is wrong. Everything that they thought they shared in terms of values is wrong. So, you know, you can trust what the person says. No, you can't. Because they weren't staying at work late. They were going to so and so's apartment.
- [107:12]
Stephen Bartlett
It's like, I didn't know this person.
- [107:13]
John Gottman
Yeah, I didn't know this. Yeah. Who, who are you? That's right.
- [107:15]
Julie Gottman
Who are you? And you know, relationships are really oftentimes, you know, especially committed ones, are the foundation for our whole life. You know, we build everything around that. Oftentimes our sense of family, even our sense of work. Sometimes. What work? We choose how we live our lives. Purpose, purpose and meaning that we give our lives together. And when there's betrayal like that and the person that you thought your partner was isn't, then that whole thing cracks and falls to the ground. It shatters.
- [107:54]
Stephen Bartlett
And how many people, how many couples cheat in any of those definitions that you've described?
- [108:02]
John Gottman
Well, we don't really know, but probably around 30% of all couples is. You think it's that's a conservative estimate.
- [108:13]
Julie Gottman
Conservative. Really? I've heard 15% of men and women. And the thing that's interesting is, is that the stats for women having affairs has pretty much caught up to men now. But here's why. When before the 70s and the women's liberation movement, women were stuck at home. They weren't out in the world working. They didn't have access to other.
- [108:47]
John Gottman
The milkman and the plumber was.
- [108:50]
Julie Gottman
And the mailman maybe, you know, they. So, you know, they were stuck at home having coffee around their, you know, kitchen table with their neighbor woman, you know, whoever. But once they entered the workforce, then they had access to a whole field of potential people out there. And so, you know, it's interesting as.
- [109:13]
Stephen Bartlett
You say that, Julia, I was. I was thinking through all the implications of what would happen in a woman's life when she went out to work. And one of the other things is she would become more independent in every sense of the word.
- [109:25]
Julie Gottman
Exactly. That's right. She doesn't have to stay in the marriage. She can support herself financially.
- [109:32]
Stephen Bartlett
So how do you treat an affair?
- [109:35]
Julie Gottman
So we developed a model based on our research called the atone attune attach AAA model. And here's what, in a nutshell, here's what it involves. Again, it has to be done in therapy. You really can't do this stuff at home. It's too intense. First, the person who did the betraying needs to respond totally transparently to every question the hurt partner asks them. However, the hurt partner shouldn't probably ask about the kind of sex they had. And here's why. I mean, it's an important thing. Almost every person who suffered through an affair has PTSD from it Post traumatic stress disorder. And part of post traumatic stress disorder is having these images or flashbacks, if you will come into your mind unbidden. You don't want them there, but they come in anyway. And traumatic memory is different than regular memory. Regular memory, you have a few little fragments, something said and so on. Traumatic memory, everything comes up at one time. The images, the smells, the sounds, the adrenaline, cortisol and so on. So when a woman asks questions about sex and then gets the answers, guess what? You know. So her images now are like flooding her mind with the kind of sex they had. You know, the partner and the affair partner that plague her to an even greater degree. And it's horrible. So atone answering the questions and then saying I'm sorry a thousand times and really meaning it. Really, really meaning it. I've had many. Both men and women who've cheated on their partners or had affairs who end up crying during that phase. Even the strongest of men will cry when they realize how hurt the woman is or the man. The other thing that they. That the betraying partner needs to do is to listen to the other partner's feelings without defensiveness. Just listen. But in the therapy, you know, a lot of times what happens is that the therapist has to help shape the hurt partner's expression of emotion, to take it out of criticism and out of contempt into. I feel destroyed. I feel like my, you know, my world has fallen apart. I feel so empty, so abandoned, so rejected. So she has to describe, or he has to describe their own feelings, not how bad the partner was, which is typically what happens at home. So that's the atonement phase. Attune. And this has to come after atonement, not as the first thing. They start looking at the actual marriage or relationship itself and what was wrong with it. And a lot of times what you see are couples who at first might have had terrible conflict. It was so bad, they started avoiding conflict. Once they avoided conflict, they got more emotionally distant, and the person who did the betraying got lonely. Got lonely. So oftentimes, the affairs are not about just getting more sex. They're about loneliness and beginning to talk to somebody else about how unhappy they are. And then the third phase is attachment. So it's like reattaching to your partner. That second phase is really rebuilding trust. And the third phase is recommitting to the relationship. And in many, this is not always true. I've seen the opposite. But in many cases, the sexual relationship doesn't resume until phase three, especially if the woman is the one who's been betrayed. But there are some where the woman will kind of throw herself at the man sexually to compete with the affair partner and be better than the affair partner. So it can be both.
- [114:32]
Stephen Bartlett
I mean, I've got so many questions that. So the first phase was the atonement, attunement, and then attachment. So many questions at different phases in that. I mean, there's so many of them. I'll start from the top, which was. How many times do you apologize?
- [114:47]
Julie Gottman
A thousand.
- [114:48]
Stephen Bartlett
Because is it true that at some point you've got to kind of move on?
- [114:52]
John Gottman
No, you have to know what you're apologizing for.
- [114:56]
Julie Gottman
Well, that's important, but here's why. And probably some of your audience, especially therapists, may disagree with this, but I've treated it for 50 years. PTSD doesn't disappear? It doesn't disappear.
- [115:14]
John Gottman
Right.
- [115:15]
Julie Gottman
It can get episodes of getting triggered, can be much less frequent over time, or maybe not as intense, but it never disappears. So, for example, you may apologize a lot during the therapy. Things get better, better, better, better, better. And then a couple months later, after you leave therapy, the man is late home from work and doesn't call. Well, guess what happens? Boom. She goes into full blown PTSD reenactment, basically where it's gotten triggered again. And oh my God, he's doing it again. You see, that's why you can't stop apologizing and just put it behind you. You don't put PTSD behind you. You see?
- [116:05]
Stephen Bartlett
Interesting. I guess that's the cost of cheating is the first one.
- [116:10]
John Gottman
Yeah, it really is.
- [116:11]
Stephen Bartlett
Never be the same again.
- [116:12]
Julie Gottman
It's a high cost.
- [116:13]
John Gottman
That's very high cost.
- [116:15]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [116:15]
John Gottman
Yeah.
- [116:16]
Stephen Bartlett
I wrote insecurity as you were talking as a note. And I think what I meant when I wrote that is being cheated on must create a huge amount of, like, lasting insecurity. And it kind of links to the second thing I was writing down, which is this whole question of, like, why did you cheat on me? And it must be, for a lot of people, difficult to answer that question, because if it's. And also I was thinking some people don't even know. They don't actually. So they might try and hazard a guess and do even more harm.
- [116:44]
Julie Gottman
Right.
- [116:44]
Stephen Bartlett
Well, I think it's because you gained some weight or I think, well, you. I think you, you smell or you know what I mean? When actually it's something much deeper.
- [116:53]
Julie Gottman
So, like, that's right.
- [116:54]
Stephen Bartlett
You know. So is that a useful question to even ask? In that setting it is.
- [117:00]
Julie Gottman
But again, in the setting of therapy, in the setting of therapy, you need the safety, hopefully with a good therapist, you need the safety that the therapist provides where, you know, why did she cheat? Well, because you're an asshole, you know, no, that's not going to work, you know, So I once treated a couple where he had had 57 affairs and they'd only been. They had three children under the age of 10 and he'd had 57 affairs, and three of them he actually fell in love with. Okay? So, you know, you can, you can easily say, oh, because the guy has a sexual addiction, or blah, blah, blah. No, not true. The real reason was that he had been raped as a kid and he feared, oh my God, maybe I'm a latent homosexual, which in his culture was the worst in the wor. You know, in the worst way. So he had to keep proving to himself that he was heterosexual, heterosexual, heterosexual, over and over and over again. And as soon as he, you know, we put that together because he just completely blocked it out for the most part. Boom, the affair stopped.
- [118:34]
Stephen Bartlett
Wow. It just goes to show how complex it can be.
- [118:39]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [118:39]
Stephen Bartlett
Yeah.
- [118:40]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [118:42]
John Gottman
Yeah. It's atonement, not. Not forgiveness. Big difference there. Because when therapists emphasized forgiveness in this affair situation, they would blame the betrayed partner for not forgiving.
- [119:00]
Stephen Bartlett
Is acceptance important?
- [119:02]
Julie Gottman
Acceptance of what?
- [119:03]
Stephen Bartlett
The situation you find yourself in.
- [119:06]
Julie Gottman
No, no, that's bad because you're accepting something that's hurtful. That's terribly hurtful.
- [119:17]
Stephen Bartlett
The reason I asked that particular question is. Cause I was thinking about my friend who's going through this breakup, and much of the agony that I see himself in is because he's refusing to accept the situation, it seems, and all the resistance.
- [119:29]
Julie Gottman
What's the situation?
- [119:30]
Stephen Bartlett
Is basically someone's broken up with him.
- [119:32]
Julie Gottman
Oh.
- [119:33]
Stephen Bartlett
And so it's this constant rumination of maybe if I do this, I can change it, or maybe if I go almost like thinking back in time to see. See if he could time travel and fix all his mistakes. And I was. And I was saying to him, and this might be bad advice, but I was saying to him, like, I think the first thing is we have to accept that this is the situation you find yourself in, and then we'll work from here.
- [119:50]
Julie Gottman
Oh, oh, oh. That's. Yeah, that's a whole different meaning of acceptance. Yeah.
- [119:55]
Stephen Bartlett
I don't mean accept the fact that they cheated on you and like, deal with.
- [119:58]
Julie Gottman
Right. That's. That's how I interpreted it at first. But yes, acceptance. You know, I would call that grounding in the reality of what you have right now and then, you know, really grounding in it. Okay. I really have made all these mistakes. And, you know, if the partner maybe. Maybe, you know, tiny little teeny weeny spark left. I call it an ember that in therapy it can be blown on, you know, to bring back the fire and the passion in the relationship. Hooray. But as John was pointing out, sometimes the person is only feeling the ashes of the past relationship. There are no embers left.
- [120:51]
Stephen Bartlett
This is a difficult question to ask, but have you ever seen cheating help a relationship?
- [120:57]
Julie Gottman
Oh, every time.
- [121:00]
Stephen Bartlett
Really?
- [121:00]
Julie Gottman
When there's recovery. Every time. Not every time, but very, very often. Very often. When they get help. When they get help. If they don't get help, it's not going to, you know, it's worse. But when they get help, the help can help them change all the patterns in the relationship and help them learn who the other person really is, what their needs really are, how they want you to turn up in the relationship that they had no idea of before. So it can create more intimacy, different kind of trust, of course, but more intimacy and more connection.
- [121:47]
John Gottman
Betrayal is always implied. Prior conflict avoidance. Instead of talking to your partner about what's wrong, you talk to somebody else about what's wrong with you with the partner.
- [122:01]
Stephen Bartlett
What are some of the so you're telling me that 74% of the time affairs can be treated. 75% of the time affairs can be treated Roughly. What are some of the revelations or realizations that you've had over the all the years of your work about the nature of humans and relationships and love and dating and all these things that always stick front of mind for you? I'm going to ask you first, John, from a research perspective, is there any particular research which you'd consider to be your favorite research that was most pivotal for the way you think that you haven't mentioned yet?
- [122:34]
John Gottman
I think that relationships can be great sources of longevity, health, great context for raising children. And so they can have this wonderful magic that is health giving, longevity giving. And it just requires certain conditions to be met and those are the principles that make relationships work.
- [123:04]
Stephen Bartlett
Is there a particular piece of research that you're most fond of he's done.
- [123:12]
Julie Gottman
Or somebody else has done?
- [123:14]
Stephen Bartlett
Both?
- [123:16]
John Gottman
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think this whole field of social epidemiology is, which has emerged in the last 50 years, really shows that relationships are life giving and longevity giving. Given today's level of medical treatment of chronic illness, it's really relationships that make the difference and really make the difference in raising kids.
- [123:43]
Stephen Bartlett
And the last thing I want to talk to you about is this idea of bids for connection, because it's a very popular topic and there's lots of people online and on TikTok discussing the importance of bids for connection.
- [123:53]
John Gottman
Right.
- [123:55]
Stephen Bartlett
What are bids for connection?
- [123:58]
John Gottman
Well, in this apartment lab that Julie and I built, there were three cameras. And at the time it was only possible to technologically merge two of them in a split screen. So the people in the control room had to use the cameras in a particular way so that they had a split screen. And they very quickly saw that quite often one person was trying to get the other person's attention or interest. And so they would focus on that person who was saying, oh, look at that beautiful boat going by, and Then they focus the other camera on the partner and see the response. And so you had this sort of two step interaction, one attempting to get the partner's attention, making a bid for connection, and the other person either responding or not responding or responding irritably, turning toward or turning away or turning against. And it turned out that six years later, the couples who eventually divorced, when they looked back six years earlier, they had turned toward these bids an average of 33% of the time, whereas the couples who were still married, they look back six years later, they had turned toward their partner's bids 86% of the time. So this huge difference, 33% versus 86%.
- [125:29]
Stephen Bartlett
You mentioned three responses to a bid for connection. So my partner comes up to me, she goes, babe, look at this. You mentioned they turn toward them, which is me turning towards my partner and saying, what is it, babe?
- [125:37]
Julie Gottman
It's not physical.
- [125:38]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay.
- [125:39]
Julie Gottman
Mind you, could be. No, what I'm trying to say is that a lot of people interpret turning toward as, oh, you turn your body towards the partner. No, it's not. It's just say it's responding to your partner's desire for interest or attention.
- [125:57]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay.
- [125:58]
Julie Gottman
Yeah.
- [125:59]
Stephen Bartlett
And then turning away is me not responding. Ignoring them, then turning against would be.
- [126:04]
John Gottman
An irritable kind of response.
- [126:06]
Julie Gottman
Stop interrupting me, I'm working.
- [126:07]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay.
- [126:08]
Julie Gottman
Yeah.
- [126:10]
Stephen Bartlett
So 86% of the couples that stayed together were those that turned toward I. They acknowledged the bid for connection.
- [126:17]
Julie Gottman
No, no.
- [126:17]
John Gottman
The couples who stayed married had turned toward bids. And 86% of the time. So when their partner tried to get their attention, probability of them turning toward was 0.86.
- [126:31]
Stephen Bartlett
Okay.
- [126:32]
John Gottman
86% of the time they turned toward. The other thing that was interesting was that people who turned toward a lot tended to have a sense of humor together during conflict, which reduced physiological arousal. So how do you get people to laugh together when they're disagreeing? And it turns out that if you increase turning toward, people spontaneously develop more of a sense of humor about themselves during conflict. That was a really amazing finding of one of my graduate students.
- [127:05]
Stephen Bartlett
Driver, you can teach people to turn toward, acknowledge those bits.
- [127:08]
John Gottman
Yeah, you can, you know, just increase awareness.
- [127:11]
Stephen Bartlett
I've struggled with that in my relationships. I've not been very good at turning towards, I. E. When my partner makes a bid for connection. I've not been great at. I often saw it as like an interruption or you knew I was busy or like, you.
- [127:22]
John Gottman
Right, right.
- [127:23]
Stephen Bartlett
But from doing this podcast, in fact, and speaking to lots of great people like you guys, I've in those Moments I go, steve, fuck. The laptop. Just turning mid email.
- [127:35]
Julie Gottman
Hi.
- [127:35]
Stephen Bartlett
What's up? What's up? You know, and it helps.
- [127:38]
Julie Gottman
Let me give you a suggestion, you know, because all of us have times when we can't turn towards right because we've got a deadline or we've got something. But what you can do is say, honey, I would really love to listen to you right now, but I've got to finish this project after I do another hour of work. Can we then talk? Yeah, you see? So you're putting a bookmark in there that says, I want to talk to you, but I've got this competing.
- [128:06]
John Gottman
That's a nice way of saying goal.
- [128:07]
Julie Gottman
That I have to finish and. But then we'll talk.
- [128:12]
Stephen Bartlett
My partner says to me, it's how you say it. Oh, you know, so I've just got to be like, actually turn my body language so I'm acknowledging the person, not like saying it, while without missing a keystroke, turn my body and say it in a way that's loving. Not just one second. I'm just working on something. It's not.
- [128:31]
Julie Gottman
It just, you know, it's not gonna work. That's not gonna work.
- [128:36]
Stephen Bartlett
Even worse is just at one time.
- [128:37]
Julie Gottman
Good try, you know, C minus.
- [128:42]
Stephen Bartlett
If. If people want to learn more about all the work that you do, how do they go about finding you?
- [128:49]
Julie Gottman
Well, a couple of things. They can go to gottman.com G-O-T t m a n.com Internet site. There's a whole bunch of stuff there. Or they can go to our books. And the last one, especially if you're dealing with conflict, the last one is called Fight. Right. But we also have one that is eight dates. Essential conversations for a lifetime of love. And that's a great one, too.
- [129:22]
John Gottman
And there's also a website we've created called Gottman Connect, where people can actually go and take questionnaires and evaluate the strengths and challenges in their own relationship in the privacy of their homes, and then access 37 video modules that Julie and I created for improving how you deal with conflict, how you improve intimacy, sexual connection, and so on.
- [129:47]
Stephen Bartlett
We have a closing tradition on this podcast, where the last guest lives leaves a question for the next. I'm going to start with Julie. Tell us about a paranormal experience you've had.
- [129:56]
Julie Gottman
Okay. I have visions now and then, and they always happen when I'm driving for some odd reason. So I was driving across the Mojave Desert, and I felt a very strong urge to pull over. Okay. I always listen to those pulled over walked into the desert to whatever felt like the right place. Sat down, started to meditate. And felt myself inside a huge golden mountain that was just glowing. And it took the form of a huge golden Buddha. And I was sitting, tiny little being in its hands. And it lifted me up off the ground. And I heard many truthful things about reality that form my very foundation.
- [131:12]
Stephen Bartlett
Can you give me one?
- [131:15]
Julie Gottman
Everybody suffers. Everybody. And nobody suffers more than anybody else. Everybody has their own suffering. And everybody has their own path to move through that suffering and to heal. And people do heal, but life is full of suffering. That's normal. It's. It's not a sense of duality. Suffering is part of the perfection of our existence.
- [131:59]
Stephen Bartlett
It really does change your perspective on yourself and others. When you. When you hear that. That point about suffering being unavoidable. Because then at least you can. You don't treat yourself as such a victim to.
- [132:11]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [132:12]
Stephen Bartlett
Suffering. You realize that it's part of. It's fundamentally attached to all the things that I love as well, you know?
- [132:16]
Julie Gottman
That's right.
- [132:17]
Stephen Bartlett
What about you, John? Have you ever had a paranormal experience when the numbers just came together perfectly? And.
- [132:27]
John Gottman
I don't know if this is a paranormal experience, but I. Alan, I was once driving through the University of Washington Arboretum. And I was really, really sick. And I was driving toward my office because I had a client who was suicidal. And I hadn't been able to reach her to cancel the appointment. And I canceled all the other appointments. But as sick as I was, I just didn't think I could, you know, just not show up, you know, So I had to show up and at least say, I'm really too sick, you know, physically to see you, but I care about you. And as I was driving through the arboretum, you know, I was. I've had a fever, and I was sneezing and coughing. I felt the presence of my parents in the car, both no longer living. I felt my mother on this cheek and my father on this cheek. And it was really very sweet. I just. Because of Julie's experiences, I kind of said, oh, well, maybe this is real. And by the time I got through the arboretum, all my cold symptoms were gone. And it was important for me to be there for that client. And I was healthy enough to actually have a session with her. So that constitutes a paranormal experience. But is she okay? It's pretty weird. She was okay. Yeah.
- [134:05]
Stephen Bartlett
Thank you so much. I've continued to learn so much from your wonderful, lovely work. And our last conversation was such a smash. Hit with my audience. Everywhere I went, people would stop me and say, oh my God, I love that episode with the Gottmans. I think it's both your wisdom, your knowledge, but also the pair of you together form such a diverse set of perspectives, which is useful in sort of taking on some of these problems that we've discussed today, which is really nice because you do have very different perspectives and you come at things differently. And I think that helps complete the whole picture. And thank you more broadly for the work that you've done on relationships and love over the last couple of decades, because people cite it everywhere I go, not just in the context of love, but they cite it in the context of business. I've used your work on stage when I did a tour of Australia recently. I've heard, I've gone to conferences in Colombia and I've heard people talk about your work on the Four Horsemen and Contempt and all these kinds of things and your, your Love Lab, as they call it. So you're doing incredibly important work, really targets the most important thing, which is keeping humans together. So thank you for all that you do and thank you for being here again.
- [135:04]
John Gottman
Thank you, Stephen.
- [135:05]
Julie Gottman
And thank you very much for being the, again, the best interviewer we've had in 30 years.
- [135:16]
Stephen Bartlett
Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it, you'll know I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the Diary of a CEO into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So you've got every guest we've ever had their question, and on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version 2 updated Conversation cards are out right now at the conversationcards.com they sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quite quickly. If you're someone running a business today, that means you're probably operating in a world that doesn't sit still. Tariffs and trade policies are dynamic, customer expectations shift constantly, and the pace of innovation is relentless. So your margin of error is becoming increasingly smaller. Making decisions without full visibility across your business is not only risky, but it inevitably slows down everything. And I see it all the time. Businesses with the right ideas, but they're stuck because they're spread across five systems that don't talk to each other. Many of my companies now use our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle or, which has an AI powered business management suite that allows you to see your business more clearly. Everything from financials to HR to operations lives in one place. So instead of chasing information, you've got it all in front of you. It operates in real time so you can forecast with assurance spot problems before they even become problems, and generally move faster without blind spots. If your business is generating seven figures or more, there's a free ebook that's worth your time reading. It's called Navigating Global three Insights for Leadership and you can download it now from NetSuite.com Bartlett that's NetSuite.com Bartlett I'll link it below.
- [137:41]
John Gottman
When we started writing our thoughts down.
- [137:43]
Julie Gottman
On paper, it opened up endless possibilities. Ideas could grow beyond the borders of the mind and it changed the world. Somewhere along the way, we lost touch with paper, distracted by devices made for every purpose except for thinking and focus on edge, waiting for the next notification. But what if new technology didn't pull us away from paper but brought us closer to it? Listen. That's not paper. It's the sound of the new remarkable paper Pro rewriting the future. A paper tablet with a true color ink display, gentle reading light and unheard of tactility.
- [138:27]
John Gottman
With digital features for taking notes, thinking and organizing without any distractions, paper is.
- [138:35]
Julie Gottman
About to change the world again. Get your paper tablet@remarkable.com today.