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Episode 23: Do opposites attract
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for before we begin actually we have a caller calling in so we're going to get to the caller and then we have an interesting format for the rest of the show so caller I'm gonna put you on right now how you doing what's your name hi Nate my name is Alex can you look like Alex how you doing or good I'm good now I'm very excited to be here good guy great Alex go ahead go ahead Nate so I don't question for dr. a while it is about narcissistic and borderline personality traits like you guys talk about personality traits and I have personally became aware of these two traits and apparently my are frequently encountered in context of relationships and they're very very destructive now is wondering if there is some kind of evolutionary reason for these traits to evolve and though like come to be and I would like to hear your opinion on that yes a very good question very interesting question the personalities our personality traits are our they are the result of this is very much mmm let me let me see how I'm going to say this personalities our personalities are put together out of a mixture of genes and there are there are ways to sort of slice up what these genes are up to and there's six major categories of typical human responses that that we can that we can use there's essentially the ingredients of the human personality and this would be similar or akin to if we were going to talk about athleticism we would say okay well how fast can you run how high can you jump how long can you run how much weight can you lift in other words there would be there would be certain there would be a few different measurements or a few different characteristics that would define athleticism the same thing would be true of beauty we could we could define beauty quite effectively with a half-a-dozen characteristics and it would all make sense to us in the same way that the human personality how people are different from one another also winds up being able to be defined quite well by a half-a-dozen variables those variables are they're known as the big five in personality theory plus intelligence and so the big five are openness to experience conscientiousness the introversion extroversion or how sociable people are how agreeable they are and how emotionally stable they are and so the those those five called the big five emerge repeatedly in studies of personality as the five major factors that define individual differences in people now these are each of these characteristics when they're measured they fall in bell curves so each individual just as they fall on a bell curve as to how tall they are and they fall in a bell curve and how and how fast they can run they also fall on bell curves and how intelligent they are and they fall in bell curves on all these other five variables like openness to experience conscientiousness introversion extroversion agreeableness and emotional stability now so psychologists psychiatrists will label people out really more about of convenience as well as sort of a early primitive knowledge of personality so early thinking and personality tend to think of personalities as types and so what you are referring to as borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder this we're calling these disorders as if there's a malfunction and and as if this is a type it's not a type what these are these are descriptions in the same way that we would say that a man that is six six is tall okay so so we just use a word that gives a category we say well he's very tall okay so we know what that means we know that he's not 5/7 if we say he's very tall the because it's a description a relative description of how people are relative to other people now the narcissistic personality disorder for example is a description of somebody who obviously is very very full of themselves thinks very very highly of themselves and the way that they think about themselves as being as being very special is actually inconsistent with the truth okay so that that's what's striking people as odd about their behavior is that they they are acting as if they should be treated like Elvis Presley but they are not in fact Elvis Presley so as a result those people are are very irritable often and they can be supremely confident that they are right about things and that they are that they feel like other people are not treating them fairly etc etc now let's look about what this is because this should be inside the big five and it is so what what a narcissist is is actually somebody that's very disagreeable and so a narcissistic personality disorder is essentially nothing other than the high disagree ability if you start looking at 96 97 98 99 percentile in terms of disagreeable this is what this is these people feel like they are extremely deserving of things that they are not deserving of and the reason why they think so is that they're they're essential mechanism for determining fairness is actually miscalibrated because they happen to be a genetic outlier so there isn't there is not an evolutionary reason why this quote type exists so this is not like suddenly we've got somebody with blue hair and we've got to figure out why there's a type it's not a type it's simply a gene variant it's the same reason you've got men that are 6 foot 8 they are simply a genetic outlier and they happen to be sitting in at a spot in the bell curve and that's what that is now in relationships obviously people that are no cystic people are very difficult to deal with and so the relationships require some sort of exchange process in fact that's what relationships are is exchange processes between individuals and so in in romantic relationships narcissists are very problematic because they are essentially believing that they are not being treated fairly very often in the relationship and so they are signaling this by being very irritated and angry a great deal of the time and and so as a result those are problematic individuals but it just as very tall people exist and very short people exist and very smart people exist and very stupid people exist narcissists quote exist is simply a person that is sitting on a place on a bell curve now border lines are a little bit more interesting so border lines are borderline is a the original conception of a border line was an ocean from psychoanalytic psychology in the early 20th century was it was the notion that that that these people were so odd and so volatile that maybe they were a little bit crazy okay so it was a vague notion that maybe they're halfway between neurotic and psychotic this turns out to be not true so this was just a so they got they got a name that really doesn't mean what it is that they are what they are is they're actually disagreeable and unstable so they are highly unstable inherently and so what we're going to do is we're going to look under the stability dimension to try to understand why that individual difference variable exists the instability in in emotional tone is going to go a long ways it's essentially a computation a derivative of a computation about how much energy one should put into some opportunity or avoiding some disaster so you can imagine someone that is so stable that there's a tremendous opportunity right next door to him and he is you know somebody just invented McDonald's right next door and the guy came over and said hey do you want to buy one of these franchises and he's like no I don't think so I'm just not that big a deal okay so this is this would be someone who is too stable to to actually cash in on what a normal member of the species would realize was worth energy putting it okay that would be a highly stable person on one end of the continuum on the other end of the continuum would somebody that would be very unstable so they would have tremendous amount of energy for things for investing time time and energy and effort into things that that may not make sense and it may be for example they may be feeling like there are threats that they have to really shore up and they have to really be careful so they might be quite paranoid about things or they all can also be very excited about things and so they typically the more the most classic borderline patient is going to be a female and there's going to be reasons for this and we're going to see this is going to be a very often a female characteristic so borderline females are I think they outnumber men about nine to one diagnostically or some very high ratio like that the reason is is that the the nature of mating in humans and females actually in humans between males and females is that in our species the female does a tremendous amount of investing again in offspring much more so than will necessarily be seen in other species out in other words we only have one child per year many other species will have four or five or 100 children so we are next namely high investment species when it comes to parenting so therefore sexuality is is particularly expensive and important to people particularly the following issue in sexuality which is male investment so in our species we have pair-bond psychology where females are attempting to optimize the resources that they get out of mating with males and so they are they're designed by nature to try to be very picky and fussy about making very very good choices in this in this arena now you can imagine if you were a very unstable female the problem is is that you would see something that looked attractive and you would be much more motivated to pursue it all things being equal than a female that was much more civil and so as a result one of the most attractive opportunities for females that actually tickles their sexuality is men that are fancier than they are that come on to the female under the under the strategy of casual mating and that the males are will so in other words if a male is a nine and a females seven the female is designed by nature to be very excited about this possibility but in an inherently normally stable female smells a rat and she does not jump into bed with the smell because she feels like this is too risky and she better just find out what happens and at least wait a couple of dates but if you are a very unstable female you happen to be on the bell curve of high instability then you will jump into bed in the next hour okay but what happens is you are also then very excited because the male has actually made some noises about how special he thinks you are so therefore you're also thinking that you're in a pair bond situation okay so this is a border line so border lines get extremely sexual very quickly with men the men are clear a plain casual mating strategy but the the the they're making the borderline and offer that the borderline cannot refuse when the borderline then finds out the next morning or two hours later that they are being rejected that they in fact did not qualify for a pair of on strategy they are outraged and they feel like that they have been lied to which in effect they sort of work but the male is thinking my god check didn't you didn't you see the handwriting on the wall what the hell did you expect I only met you last night but to the borderline the borderline is saying oh no you son of a bitch like how could you do this to me it happened again okay and so they are enraged they are miserable they are suicidal they are murderous in other words this is the characteristic of the borderline be you will not see it as typical in males because males cannot be deceived and effectively ripped off by females around their sexuality in the way that males can rip off female sexuality so that is why you see the unstable and also very often threads of disagreeable it helps to manufacture a borderline personality disorder if the if you are also somewhat disagreeable so you believe you got more coming to you than you do so if you once again if we go back to a situation where the female is a seven even if she's unstable but she's very agreeable interestingly enough she may she may feel like this guy is too fancy and that this is not a fair trade and therefore that will engineer her to be more careful in that exchange but if she's a little disagreeable she doesn't see anything wrong with the nine coming on to her because after all she feels like she is sort of a nine and so now she gets into this thing like wildfire winds up bitterly angry and murderously enraged and also devastated and and this is the this is where we see the route this is what a borderline is so once again a borderline is not a type these are matters of degree and they are they fall out naturally out of the variances that we see in the big five so I hope that I hope that explains us yeah it's just no answer and under I will have to listen to it again - good catch last word if I can ask you a follow-up question jar so from my understanding both border lines and narcissists in the beginning of a relationship we kind of replay to the liking goodbye partner by almost like adopt a fake personality for a certain amount of time and at some point in the future of a mask comes often like through personality shines through and I'm not sure how how is this related is this similar to what he was saying about the human capacity for self-deception or it's some kind of adaptations yeah no I think that early in relationships all human beings are essentially entice people into the relationships by by pretending that they are better than they really are so this is not a characteristic of the borderline or the narcissist this is a pen human characteristic of species wide okay so this is how this is how Ford tries to lure you away from Chevy is that they use whatever shameless procedure they can to try to you know rebate discount you know etc anything that they can do their stuff it will show up on your doorstep with some company is going to give away a free sample everybody is trying to essentially shake you out of your existing trading situations which are N and try to lure you into new relationships with them if they are seeking you and so the way we lure people into relationships is by essentially pretending a rosy picture over the cost-benefit analysis of the value proposition that we bring to the relationship and so this is why everybody really in a in a you know early in a dating relationship I can I can remember 10 years ago I went on a date on match.com and the woman was a medical doctor she was bright lady and I was she had great pictures and I was looking forward to meeting her and I met her and of course she was 25 pounds heavier than her pictures and I was instantly I'm interested okay so we had a very we had a very pleasant lunch in San Francisco and I chatted with her and she was a nice gal and and I I could tell you know I'm not flattering myself I'm no prize but I was prize enough for her so she is very interesting and what we started what I started hearing for the last half-hour the lunch was how she always during this time of year always puts on this weight and then it miraculously comes off you know for sure afterwards and so she kept selling this except selling this so what she's doing is she that had given me a phony value proposition with photography that wasn't true I thought it would be fine meets me and then has the anxiety of realizing that she may not have a sufficient value proposition and then start selling me on how it is that it's going to be better in the future this is this is going to be human nature 101 and so the borderline and the the borderline will essentially know that she's got some troubles with stability and some disagree ability so people in general are going to demonstrate more agree ability than is true for them that makes sense in other words when you are trading in relationships you are what relationships are is all they are is value propositions that are being analyzed through cost-benefit analysis and cost-benefit analysis in this case isn't how many donuts you get from the donut store it is actually genetic cost-benefit analysis along the genetic values that human beings trade and they trade the big five okay and they trade their athleticism and they trade their beauty and they trade their capability in the market is to get resources and so the borderline is well aware that just like every human is that you got to act more agreeable than you really are and they also have to know that they need to act more stable than they really are and so it it isn't that the mask comes off it's that the mask always comes off of everybody and in this case if a borderline is acting like she's at the 80th percentile for instability but she's really at the 96th percentile that 16 percentile difference has phenomenal consequences and she can act that way and therefore Bluff a guy into a situation that he thinks he's safe but he's not in anything close to safe whereas that same 16 percentile Bluff if we've got a woman who is safe for example she's actually at the 40th percentile for agreeable for females she's a slightly disagreeable female but totally in the normal wrench and she Bluffs that in fact she's at the 56th percentile for agreeable the guy is thinking oh great this is a sweet person I'm not going to have problems with conflict with interests but hurt with her you know she'll go to the movies 56 percent of the time of the places that I want you know what I want to go so he's feeling like he's going to get a better deal than he's really going to get when he finds out when all the smoke clears four or five six months later that it is not quite as good a deal at least it's functionally reasonably similar and he may he may feel like he got hosed but he didn't get hosed that badly whereas with a borderline the difference between in between 1896 percentile disagreeable and an eighty percentile disagreeable is huge because as you get out to the extremes of the bell curves those functional differences are phenomenal the differences in height and the utility of Heights for example out of the bell curve are extraordinary it is estimated that 20% of every man between the ages of 20 and 40 living in the United States that is 7 feet tall is now employed in the National Basketball Association okay extremes are fascinating and potentially useful and dramatic and in the case of high instability disagreeable females you don't see that borderline coming not because they are so deceptive with the mask it's because we are all deceptive but that amount of deceptiveness is enough to to mask a tremendous liability that they're walking in with and the same is true with a narcissist so I hope that's useful okay within the realm of clinical psychology and and there is actually a lot of different approaches one of which I've come across called emotionally focused therapy and today we have a guest his name is Jack Hirschfeld joining us to give us insight into this process so we're going to see what we can learn by listening to a discussion between dr. Lyle and Jack Hirschfeld so Jack Rochelle is a marriage and family therapist he has a private practice in Southern California where he helps distressed couples to regain the sense of love and intimacy utilizing the emotional focused therapy process he's an adjunct faculty at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and psychology department Jack thank you for joining us today how are you oh they're well made them let it to be here glad to have you here Jack I'm going to play three separate audio clips one by one from a clinical psychologist named sue Johnson and just a little bit about sue Johnson she's actually the primary developer of the technique called emotionally focused therapy and we're going to play one clip at a time and after each clip we're going to get some commentary from dr. Lyle and then from Jack and them Jack we'll hear from you and then we can both discuss and then and then see then we can just go to the next clip when we feel like we've we've come to a good point sound good oh good opposites attract and should they if you look at the literature and social psychology I know actually similar people are pulled towards similarities I mean but the tricky part about that is there's lots of different kinds of opposites and similarity you know maybe your extroverts sometimes find introverts really fascinating right and really and willing to listen to them you know I'm an extrovert maybe I like to have introvert friends because they'll listen while I talk I like to talk they'd like me to talk so you can have those kinds of things but that similarity in values really seems to matter in the literature people who marry and have long-term marriages usually have similar values similar outlooks and life so there are some basic similarities that are there I think the real issue is not about similarities and differences it's about how you deal with the fact you have enough similarity that you can connect and you can see the world in the same way you can share each other's view in the world but also how you deal with differences that's the key issue and for lots of couples you know if you just have differences that are just differences and you have a secure emotional bond differences can be fun my husband liked hiking up mountains I hate hiking up mountains I look like I get all if I'm going to hike it's obvious to me it should hike on flat ground why do you walk up on a walk straight uphill it hurts my feet I don't like it at the beginning of our marriage that was a big deal because it wasn't about hiking it wasn't about you know it was about him saying if you loved me you'd come hiking with me oh that's not about hiking that's a love issue that's a bonding issue an attachment issue so lots of times differences which can be fun and you can play with them these days I go hiking I sometimes go hiking with my husband teaching me how to do it it expands my life differences could be fun but in the beginning of our marriage they weren't fun they were a big issue and there were lots of emotional arguments about whether I would go hiking with him and what it meant that I didn't want to go him didn't I care about that he wanted me to go hiking with him so it's tricky you have to learn to have conversations where you can deal with differences and still reassure each other and still keep this emotional bond safe and strong if you can do that you can have lots of differences between you and they can be fun they can add to your life you know they can you can teach each other things that that you can give each other different points of view as long as those differences don't become all mixed up in do you love me do I matter to you do you care about my feelings do you want to be with me once difference is getting viewed with that those emotional dramas then it can be very difficult for come all right dr. Lisle is here from you first well there's there's a lot there and so she's uh she's she's sort of as a clinician I see her sort of wandering into the weeds what she's talking about thee so I'm gonna try to answer the question first and then recognizing that if she said she said a lot of different things that that weren't directed I don't think to the question in mine so just for the sake of listeners we will answer the question and that is you opposites attract and or or do we seek similar people etc the the the truth of the matter is is that the the psychologist here essentially says well the literature says the people are drawn to people like them this is not true and it is also not true that opposites attract so let's let's look at an example to try to understand this so we understand that this from the fundamental dynamics of biology about what's actually happening in mate selection the what's happening is let's suppose we've got some fat bald guy down by the beach and he's he's 60 years old with big potbelly and what walks by is a 32 year old smoking really super attractive female now I would expect we'd all agree that he is attracted to her so they are not similar now if if people were attracted to similar than what what we should be seeing him attracted to would be a fat balding female with a big pot belly with wrinkled skin that was 60 years old okay he is not attracted to somebody similar to him he is attracted to somebody extremely different than him the meanwhile let's look at the female in this case so we got the 32 year old really hot female and what walks up to her is a handsome 35 year old tall lean athletic good-looking male is she attracted him yes in fact that's probably her boyfriend okay so so they are similar on these dimensions they are not different and so they seem to be tracted to each other so yet so we clearly see that in the first case are bald short guys not attracted to similar people he's attracted to different people and in her case she's attracted to similar people so clearly both ways of looking at this dynamic are are fundamentally flawed and so this is what is being missed here in the conventional analysis and psychology what people are attracted to is value okay fundamentally what a nervous system is the certain kinds of organisms on earth are animals and what animals have that plants don't have is brain and the fundamental problem of the brain is to actually analyze possibilities for action targets for action in the environment and to assign values to those differences so you assign a difference if you're a human you like an apple better than you like a pile of manure when it comes to eating so you're designed by nature to actually analyzed the biological value of certain targets so in the case of the fat ol guy he is designed by nature to observe that the young hot female is a high biological value target and he is attracted to it okay she observes him and observes that he is a blo biological value and she's not attracted to it she is attracted to high biological value mates as he is attracted to high biological value mates so we now can understand when people say well well people sort of wind up with people like them they don't wind up with people like them because that's what they want they wind up with people like them because that's as good as they could get when people so you have to understand that we trade in relationships so instead in a sense to some degree in psychology and biology we will use concepts like mate selection but that's a little bit superficial because the truth of the matter is it's a useful concept in word to use but people don't select their mates they compete for and then wind up getting what they can get so for example if you were shopping for a house in Los Angeles you would shop with a budget in mind about what you could get now from within what it is that you thought you could get you would do some selecting on these variables but believe me you would prefer to be at the top of the hill in Beverly Hills and Aaron Spelling's mansion then you would like to be in a 500 square foot house private secret condo and some marginal area okay so but why did you pick that according to this notion of attraction and selection similarity well the people that live in areas where there's gunshots and stuff like that they just like that because to retract that area and they go to where there's people like them that's not true they don't want to be there they want to be somewhere entirely different and our little fat guy at the beach there doesn't want to be where he is but he's doing the best he can so when it comes to personality people are not attracted to people like them they are attracted to the values and now let's look down through the big five and intelligence thing that we were just talking about earlier let's look and see if there's any indication from the way we use the language that indicates whether or not there are value judgments that are being discernible in here in these descriptions which would we might be more attracted to a highly conscientious person or a flake okay I think we can all agree what we'd be attracted to which would be me more attracted to a highly agreeable person or a highly disagreeable person I think we know okay we'd be more attracted to stable or unstable would we be more attracted to extroverted or outgoing versus introverted would be a more attracted to intelligent or stupid okay we can see that personality characteristics have value and there are there are better specimens and worse specimens in the same way that beauty is actually a very good detector of gene quality in humans so the fact that you have preferences there are universal preferences of beauty that are in violet they are it's very clear across cultures people value the same things when it comes to physical beauty certain ratios in the face for example certain bodily features are Universal features of human value for our species and the same thing is true with personality so you you people wind up in general people that are reasonably similar in conscientiousness wind up together because highly conscientious people are not attracted to flakes now our flakes attracted to conscientious people yes they are okay but they can't get them because they're out of their budget that's a house that's too expensive now when we sometimes find that people are are on opposite ends of one of these six continuo it's going to turn out that's because somebody made a sacrifice in some other area so for example some woman that's agreeable may be willing to take on a disagreeable male because he's handsome so she's trading problems in one area to try to get better in another and she's interested in handsome because she would then have better-looking children who would put put them in a position to compete for mates and future generations so what when we understand human-made selection for personality we need to look at it from the Stan point of optimizing an evolutionary budget that the person is facing and that will help explain the mystery of whether or not people are quote attracted to similar others are attracted opposites they are attracted to value and that that slash is the Gordian knot of this mystery all right jack now you you do emotionally focused therapy and and your familiy johnson's work let's get a comment from you what do you think well thank you Nick and thank you Doug a very interesting discussion do opposites attract I think you can look at this question in a little bit different views one is the the instant you need the person whether you attract it or can you sustain the relationship of a long period of time and I think that Susan Johnson was quite pointed in saying that what we attract to is not opposites to attract to the sense of safety sense of security sense of belonging sense of acceptance and understanding and when of course there's when you need the first person the first time the person there will be some physical attraction but beyond physical interaction there is also an emotional attraction an emotional attraction really can't survive without attachment and and Susan Johnson kind of went in different directions explaining this but the essence of staying together and the essence of being together is when have people have similarities and when they can answer simple questions to each other do i matter am i important will I be there for you when you need me when the questions are answered yes from both sides the relationship becomes strong and people can be together for a long period of time when relationship when those questions are answered as no or any one of those questions then there's the fight and flight response from one of the persons I'm not love you don't care I'm not important so in looking at the questions at hand the opposite attract I would say that there's a physical attraction in the beginning but at some point it needs to be converted into a long-term relationship and once it converts in a long-term relationship it's not about physical characteristic of the person it's about emotional safety emotional connection of feeling of belonging have a safe place to come to have a safe person that you can talk to somebody can be vulnerable with and now that they will be there for you they will help you to get through difficult times and the study after study shows when the secure attachment between mother and child of which actually translates a tendency to attachments and couples people become stronger they become stronger and they are more willing to go out in the world and risk because they know when something happens they can go back to the city to the person who is there secure attachment person and they can weather the storm together and in this particular case the question is somewhat difficult because it only talks about one instant in time but if we look at the totality of the relationship from the very first time you meet the person to the time you spend and decide to spend the rest of your life with this person then similarities are much more important and the Susan Johnson mentions very well that similarities and values are critical and the basic outlook on life now the differences yeah then they may be there and we can talk about physical differences but we also can talk about the emotional differences for differences of liking something versus not liking something but when there is a safe connection between between the couple and when they know that the other person is a safe person to be with then those differences are very easy to resolve and so I kind of see this more of a long-term relationship question versus an instant in which you see the person and make a decision whether you're going to deal with that person or not but it is in the physical sense every time you look at the person if they smile back to you in a way they're answering your question am I in my matter and when that feeling is there you may have a strength to approach that person but if you look at the other person and they turn around and ask or don't look at you or give you a salute that you're not welcome then the question to your the quieter the answer they provided to you know and once that answer is received then you know this is not the safe place to go - very interesting now and I'm noticing two different two different approaches from the spectrum is there any comments from from you dr. Lisle or from Jack you know about the the differences and what would you know your two approaches yeah I actually see these discussions as somewhat apples and oranges we're talking about a little bit different things I I was I was answering the issue of human nature and human nature's issues with humans have had a timeless question about do opposites attract or do people that are more similar attract and of course I was answering that question and resolving the mystery by using the concept of essentially evolutionary budgets that we compete for mates and we try to optimize our decision-making with whatever we're capable of doing what Jack's talking about is sort of the the notion that it's a the notion is is that a critical feature in relationships is what what I'm going to call an esteem dynamic and that is whether or not you're valued and so what what he's what he's putting his finger on is and what what miss Johnson was talking about is that the critical issue is whether or not you get that signal and that you signal to each other that you are that you are very very valuable and and my the question and that I was that we are being asked is why are you either valuable or not valuable okay so of course it is true that if two people value each other highly then we have a positive esteem dynamic where there's security in the relationship if we have situation where it is going awry where we are getting signals where we are not that valuable these signals are not a matter of choice as to the person that is our partner these are signals that are emanating from their biology where they are computing cost-benefit analysis on how valuable we are in a relationship relative to their perceived alternatives and so as a result the turbulence that we're going to see in relationships isn't because people are opposites and it isn't because we have a lack of turbulence because they're similar we see turbulence in relationships and in the disturbance of the love connection or the esteem dynamic because one party sees that the other party is not a not a not an adequate value proposition and although this is very sort of technical and cold the truth of the matter is this is in fact nature of nature and so love does not happen on some ethereal plane it happens it in the adaptations and the evolutionary adaptations of individual human beings and we we will find those mechanisms being activated under conditions where we feel like we've gotten an exceptionally good deal and that not only includes the person's looks and their life circumstances but it includes their personality and the personality budgeting and trading that goes on goes on along the way that I was describing in my first part of the answer about whether opposites attract or they don't check do you have any comments well of course most of my work is with couples and when they get distressed they look for solutions and yeah we know study after study shows that we have an innate need to be connected we have an innate need to belong to D together in fact studies show that when people are alone the rate of heart attack increases when people are lonely not connected they don't have anybody next to them somebody to talk to somebody except them they go into depression so considering that the work that I do is with couples that already have stressful relationship and how do we put them on a path of recovery for a lifelong fulfilling relationship and emotional focus therapy answer this question in practical terms of how do we take a person regardless of their biological traits the big five traits regardless the guard 'less of their inclinations based on their genes how do we take a couple that are currently in distress and move them into the area where the stress goes away and they have of Fruitville and fulfilling relationship that process has been shown highly effectively if emotional focus is on emotional responsibilities of each person and also connection on each side to understand what the other person goes through that process of going from this connection from going not being understanding each other to the process of being connected when each partner in the relationship fights for their survival in the relationship is what determines the outcome of the therapy so once you know going back to the same thing I kind of agree that we will be discussing upon origin however in in the therapy work we don't look at the inborn genes that put the personalities or put the person in specific position in order to take the relationship from distress point to a point where they the couple is happy so if it would be part of the unchangeable characteristics of the person then the therapist would not work and in fact many of the therapies including cognitive behavioral therapy narrative therapist they only provide the seventeen percent or so of efficacy and most of the changes occur because of the relationship between the client of the therapist in the motional focus process over seventy percent of the change occurs due to the process itself and which pretty much ignores the initial biological trait of the person as they go into the process yeah you're you're misunderstanding what I'm talking about what what we're talking about here is to to try to use our understanding of evolution to actually get a deeper insight into what the nature of the conflict are that those conflicts could be emanating from the personalities but more often the conflicts are emanating from cost-benefit analyses that people are doing on each other as you are essentially at running a value proposition that your mate every day of your life when you're with them and your maid is running a value proposition on you and people are running cost-benefit analyses on each other and what will happen when couples get into distress as you are describing Jack is that there's a disturbance in the esteem dynamic where the communication is suggesting that somebody is thinking about defecting okay and and so this then this essentially is somebody sending a signal to another saying I'm not so sure I want to be here and this this will create anxiety on this on the person who receiving this and it can also for various and sundry reasons create a retaliatory response okay this is sort of like well you can't fire me I quit and so they can also then send a reciprocal negative esteem message back to the first party there's there's reasons why this is going to be true and there's the the reasons why you see these pattern says pan human characteristics is because these are manipulative tactics that were put into humans by evolutionary history if you are about to be dumped in a village by a partner who is sending you signals that you may not qualify then what you might want to do is you might want to mitigate the status loss in your local Stone Age troop that you were dumped by saying now I dumped him first okay and so behind that you then start retaliating when you're picking up negative signals and so emotionally focused therapy or any good humanistic supportive psychotherapy for couples is going to try to this in this in history philosophy is called a Hobbesian trap that if I if I attack you and then you attack me back and I have to attack you and then you attack me back we have an escalating cycle of a what we're going to call a vicious cycle and this can tear a relationship apart so of course one of the things that we want to do is we want to try to settle that down and in a command and I think that a more emotionally focused communication there rather than maybe some of the dry communication that might come out of cognitive behavioral therapy and some of the ridiculous communication that may come out of dynamic therapy I could see could be very useful very humanistic settle it down etc but we still aren't necessarily confronting the realities that we we do not have a quote need for belonging in a relationship where we are feeling like we might want to defect if we add such a great need then we would never want to defect okay people have send affection keys to maids for a specific reason and that is that they are trying to renegotiate the relationship because they feel like they're not getting a good enough deal and so they as they send those little anger signals to a mate it alarms the mate makes the maid anxious and the mate has the opportunity to even respond with anxiety by being conciliatory we're very often they will then send it an esteem a negative signal back to the original signal er very often they might and we could start a vicious cycle so the the use of evolutionary psychology in this sort of notion within relationships is to take this to a deeper more fundamental level of what is actually taking place relationships are treads and your partner is in fact an asset that you are designed by nature to utilize in order to optimize survival reproductive biological gain that is in fact what a partner and what a relationship is this talk about bonding has nothing other to do with the oxytocin Laden process that is associated with signaling the organism about increasing value to a partner is demonstrating reliability and and and therefore stability that means that they're a good long-term partner and we have to put up with the distance the good therapy outstanding therapy and the couples arena is going to courageously drive down through the negative esteem signals that are being sent and we're not going to tell people they shouldn't send them we're going to try to understand why it is that they are frustrated why it is that they are seeking to renegotiate the contract in the relationship and why they are willing to send defection keys to a partner to create that kind of anxiety as they're signalling to a partner that we better change things or I might have to seek a new relationship these are legitimate signals and that pain is legitimate and and therefore I believe that this kind of deep penetrating insight can inform all sorts of genres of psychotherapy and certainly this emotional emotional focus therapy as well so I we hope that that the future in evolutionary psychology will help inform these these these sorts of efforts to improve the team and psychotherapy process well it's a very interesting approach and indefinitely that's huge it does not address some of the fundamental things but but I can see I can see where your explanation to make sense to you the actual the actual factual studies that were conducted to a couple so that the people get at arguments the couples get into arguments because they fight for the relationship they do not go into arguments because they want to defect a person that's not cool you're incorrect you're incorrect there they are they are really good well we'll hold on one second hold on them yeah one second okay I give you so if if after after this session I'll be happy to provide you study after study the chart that but the the actual mechanism of a couple distressed couple is when one couple is pursuing relationship and saying I need you I want you I need to talk to you while you're walking when the other couple says it's too difficult for me I want to protect the relationship so they withdraw so one is the withdraw one of the pursuer but the key for both of these counsel for both individuals is to fight for the relationship the problem is that the coping mechanism they choose to fight for the relationship gets them at the negative cycle or sorry cycle with of escalation once this is put in the perspective of attachment that the reason they fight because they want to be closer the reason the pursuer pursues the other partner because they want to feel connected the reason the partner withdraws from the relationship because they feel ashamed or scared and worried because they want to put they want to have the escalated fight once the change occurs and once they go through the process of understanding and seriously not only understanding but experiencing what a relationship can be when you can be a safe place for your partner and a safe harbor for the relationship then the dynamics changes and relationship changes and they've become they and they go to the world of the of recovery surrogate I understand what you're talking about that that's that's good solid therapy provided we don't actually have conflicts of interest where we had people signaling defection and let me tell you something when people walk through the therapeutic door very very often people are signaling defection and they mean business and so your your your painting of this picture is ignoring the fact that a great deal of the negative signaling that goes on has nothing to do with wanting to be closer or being overwhelmed by the situation but it has to do with very serious negotiating it is happening in the relationships and that that is the reality to think that human beings who are the most sophisticated communicators that there are on earth cannot manage to communicate whether they like a partner which is can be done by wolves and it can be done by koala bears if human beings cannot do that then they would be indeed be pathetic so I believe that they can signal very effectively when they are really into a relationship and they can also signal very effectively when that relationship is in serious trouble because there are value propositions that have now been reanalyzed and persons considering defection in the renegotiating so I believe that what you're describing from the theory of emotional focus therapy if you are ignoring the serious renegotiation strategy that is taking place here I think you're missing a bet
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