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Episode 278: Sexual disgust, Meaningful and authentic esteem dynamic in a pair bond
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well it's still still apparently in a free country for a little while it's all tall in the perspective that is that is theoretically at peace even though it's apparently engaging with war with russia for god's sakes i feel an impending hawk blocked rant yes i think we're we'll we'll get into it this week i'm sure yeah i'm sure or or some living wisdom library ranting as well yeah we'll see about that yeah yeah i think i think both this week yeah yeah but so but hey for for the moment for the moment we we don't have any bombs dropping on on u.s soil so i'm i'm i'm feeling okay yep we i give it a 5 out of 10. is that is that the standard that's the that's the current bar like look out the window and like that bombs aren't actively dropping so so far so good so far so good that's it it's a humans are a very adaptable species two years ago we were living in a different country and here we are glad that bombs aren't dropping there you go okay all right yep all right let's find out what we got going anybody else got anything interesting going i got a new dog oh i didn't know that i have i have a third dog now yeah how did this happen it's some stray no she was a shelter dog it was it was a it was saw the mug shot fell in love drove a couple of hours and just picked her up congratulations she's such a sweetheart she's she's just she's adorable her shelter name was princess yeah it it suits her fairly well she's um she's just a little probably i don't know 40 pound little baby pity compared to my giant pit mixes doug doug is not my dogs who are about you know 75 pounds each so this she's she feels very small and manageable next to them um and she's just a sweetheart she's just heart of gold she i've been calling her cindy lou for the the the who in whoville from the grinch the one with the giant eyes um because she uh yeah she's got big cindy lou vibes so we'll see we'll see what her name winds up being but yeah that's my big news of the week is my new hound all right all good so jen gathering up uh uh it's just one more creature to feed survival resources when the when the apocalypse sits though it's okay it's part of the garden plan to dig up potatoes yeah exactly planting planting lots of tubers for extra dogs there you go yeah no it's farm life life gotta have more more little creatures around yeah all good more people will warn you when the the marauding you know starving hordes well i mean that's yeah that's actually a really valid point because she is a little more on the ball than the the seniors yes a little more on high alert when things are happening in the in the yards sounds great just what i that's what i wanted and how how old it i'll send you a thousand photos how how long until she's she's really big and ready to attack like is that i'm just trying to gauge how long you think it's going to take for things to go downhill oh she's fully grown she's she's not gonna yeah yeah she looks like a pup but they yeah they well i think yeah we'll find out when she has her little her take her into the vet and get her checked out but she's um yeah i think she's a a little adult dog she's pretty diminutive but she's i saw some pictures very cute all right well that's very exciting i think so i don't nothing nothing happened here i i planted a uh i planted a cherry tree on the side yard that'll irritate my neighbor but you did he deserves to be irritated good news on every score he so deserves to be irritated he's such a douchebag i hate that guy just so everybody knows i i had a gorgeous you know 50 or 60 foot probably 50 foot tree uh that was in the middle of my neighbor's yard that that covered my house which i loved to hid my house and this this ocd nut chopped it down so he should be jailed for that behavior as far as i'm concerned so anyway so i planted a tree where he doesn't like it and i'm all happy about it so there you go that's fine that's awesome my my crab apple is is um alive and blooming yeah so one of the three trees that i have planted this spring is uh you know showing signs of actual life which is very exciting yes you know i didn't kill it the other two it's unclear sure he's still out yeah it's hard to be like i i it's actually a little hard to be down and depressed and miserable about cloth schwab when the when the the trees are blooming and you know it's warming up and the sun's higher in the sky so you know what it's a good spring it's going to be all right yeah yes i've been spending as much time as possible outside planting things i think it's the the antidote to everything there you go all right nathan what do we got going all right our first question dear doctors can you eliminate us a bit about the nature of sexual disgust i'm currently seeing a man who is very much in love with me and is a good match for me in general i like him very much and can imagine him as a future partner however i hate being touched by him i feel so grossed out by it it doesn't turn on turn me in on at all and so i avoid physical intimacy with him is there any way to just get over this or should i just quit [Laughter] that this is an all-timer this one belongs in the hall of fame jen yeah i i have a lot of questions yeah yeah what are what what's spinning through your head well like first of all is this a is this unique to this guy um or are you someone who experiences sexual disgust like in general in most situations um is it sometimes and not other times is it related to anything specific is it you know is it a hygiene issue is it you know like i i there there are a lot of missing factors here that could kind of fill in this answer um because she's presenting it as if his just general overall everything about him is is she's had essentially the repulsion switch has been thrown and it cannot cannot be recovered and it's not necessarily anything specific um and that's a different question than oh well yeah i you know i hate the smell of this cologne and i can't i can't stand being around him when he smells like his cologne and if he stopped using it the problem would be solved so i really feel like we we we need to know more to give a useful answer to this question but it raises all kinds of interesting general questions god see this is where it's it's embarrassing that i'm a psychologist and jen's like way way more sophisticated i just took this at face value i'm like if there if there was ever a time that if there's ever a signal that you should be paying attention to this is it like evolution couldn't be yelling at you any louder okay it's screaming in your ear at 120 decibels and you're questioning whether or not anybody's warning you yeah you're being warned uh as long as we as long as we don't have some really striking you know narrowly caused factor that jen is describing the possibility of which is possible if we are if this is a global general response without any specific you know smell or uh particularly it would be smell would be the most likely thing actually generally big for women yeah yeah it's big for women and it's um i i learned from uh diana fleischmann's work the jeffrey miller's wife who's done a lot of work on disgust in particular i learned from her that disgust for women is highly elevated during the ludial phase of their cycle when they're more susceptible to infection and so the same thing that might kind of mildly gross you out during the follicular follicular phase during the luteal phase is going to really repulse you really really turn you off so that is an important thing to pay attention to in this cycle too it's i think women this is this is your your your male lego-centric bias that's sort of women women are uh you know they're they're they're highly sensitive snowflakes on this topic they can be and so i i really like how um i can't remember the author's name offhand but the book is called very cleverly come as you are and she talks a lot about females uh sort of sexual response being driven by a series of not just gas pedals but also brake pedals and so you can have a lot of if you have too many brakes that are set at the same time no matter how much you're flooring the gas the car is not going to move forward and breaks can be everything from oh there's a sink full of dishes that i can't get out of my head and i can't relax and get in the mood until i take care of that to screaming children in the other room to i don't feel comfortable in my body i don't feel sexy too you smell bad and i'm not interested in you so it's not even necessarily specifically about him although it could be for sure um but it could also be this kind of you've got too many breaks set um and and essentially if you've immobilized the whole process um and that's why i'm curious about whether it's specifically with him or if this is kind of an ongoing issue in your sex life with various partners and you sort of struggle with this in a recurring kind of way and that's where we would get into those deeper questions yeah the the qed get a session with jen i i got your check your chick questions right here yeah yeah that's yeah that's great it's beautiful and comprehensive and yeah my uh i i i feel like i'm a one-dimensional baseball player instead of you know five tool player i'm a one tool player like you tell me that and i'm like you're in the wrong place because because i think that's true for a male i think if a male feels discussed toward a female partner and can't stand being touched by her it's like get out of this relationship there's no there's nothing more complicated going on but in female sexual psychology there could be a number of complicated things going on it doesn't mean that the occam's razor isn't ultimately correct and he's just not the right guy but um it could be a more complex situation holy smokes chicks complicated chicks they're they're complicated man [Music] remind everybody of that periodically yeah that's my it's my job yep [Laughter] all right now what do we got now well we were hoping to hear you dr lau rant out but i guess you got overruled yeah i got a little overwhelmed i'm done yeah yeah all right our next question dear doctors my ex that i was with for one year that's 60 pounds overweight and objectively a four cheated on me even though i'm 108 pounds with about a 0.7 hip to waist ratio and at least a seven why would this happen i dated him because i thought he would appreciate how much more attractive than him i was and thus treat me well and not cheat on me at the least the girls he has dated before me and cheated on me with were less attractive than i am he even said they were only okay he told me he makes seven figures but i estimate it to be 200 000 which is still great so maybe that's why he thinks he's so great and better than me he showed me the ring he was going to propose to me with as a last-ditch effort to get me to not break up with him which is apparently 80 000 ring my guess is that it's actually only fifteen thousand dollars other than that he doesn't seem interested in marriage in general even though he's 41. is he just naturally a short-term mater unless he's insanely rewarded if he really valued me wouldn't he not risk losing me over some random girls please tell me what i'm doing wrong and what's going on i have an open loop about this and feel like i can't stop thinking about this until i understand every small detail so i can avoid making the same mistakes in the future huh you can definitely take this one no you stick me with this all right [Laughter] well again there's so there's so much detail here um that i mean i i guess the the first place uh there's some things that i don't understand uh let's see is that um it seems like the girls he has dated before me and cheated on me with so so this sounds like um there's been more than one person that he cheated on her with that's the way this is worded um i would have to say that first of all there's many things to consider and the first thing is is that attractiveness um has objectivity but that objectivity is irrelevant between those two people the objectivity is interesting from the standpoint of you know evolutionary psychology population genetics uh all that sort of thing but between any two individuals it's irrelevant so the uh all that's relevant is their subjective uh assessment of the individuals that are involved so you could have a situation where i think the guys of five and and i think the woman is an eight and that she's fallen all over herself feeling over rewarded by the guy and he's he's feeling calm and and not too interested in treating her real casually okay and it's not even that he considers a flake or a dumbbell or or you know uncoordinated can't dance or you know etc in other words it's not even his his assessment of her of her mental resume it's just that now he thinks he could do better okay and maybe he could and maybe he couldn't but the point is is that from my particular subjective assessment of those two which is going to be my and also my guesstimate about what would be objective relative to you know a a bell curve of populations looking you know looking at those two people and running an assessment those things are can be completely different than the subjective experience of those two individuals and so uh this this gal is sort of looking at this thing she had an interesting mating strategy that she's reporting i i in other words a big reason why she's with him was that she was seeking security she she wanted to have a lever and and specifically some some objective lever over him that would intimidate him into a situation where he would not want to stray so that's a strange uh uh it's not a crazy assessment i've heard that assessment from women before uh but it's not a common motivation for women the uh that so particularly this kind of talk like i'm at least a seven and he's a four now i don't have any idea what what i would make of these two people uh and again my objective assessment is not it is not really important here at all her subjective assessment is interesting though uh i i would argue uh that that most of the time people aren't going down three points willingly so this is a uh even her reporting that her her uh motivation for doing this was essentially defensive and security based is interesting so then it gets better in other words so we have someone who is apparently highly motivated um for a uh for this so a relationship where she's got some control over over the you know flandering male gene and yet he demonstrates it and so he demonstrates it and rather than than just saying oh well i'm the hell out of here which isn't necessarily the right response in any given situation but for someone who is very security oriented you're and you actually played this situation very very carefully trying to leverage yourself into a position of intimidating power uh relative to you know your your subjective estimate of your attractiveness differences the um i guess i would also ask did you get evidence from him that he was falling all over himself for you and that he considered himself to have won some great prize uh maybe he did because if he's bragging about an 80 000 ring or whatever maybe maybe so but he's also if he's slept with other people uh particularly multiple ones he's also leaking um a hell of a lot of casual mating strategy motivation in the teeth of of what would in principle from your standpoint want to be a very heavily committed parabon situation so hey there's a lot of variation in human personality in these arenas certainly but i would look at this situation once again i'm trying to crawl into her head and and get a feel for the her subjective position and her subjective position is she's a person who security and fidelity security is a pretty serious deal and so for somebody who is where uh fidelity is a very serious deal then quite frankly i'm not sure what the hell we're doing with somebody that cheated on you okay not unless you've got a kid or two with him and you're financially completely you know on your knees um and with no ability to change that so uh i don't think that she does have children because they're not married and i don't know what that means but they don't have any children together and the uh and so he makes some good money but the truth is is that that is shouldn't be the reason with him we would need to to optimize our happiness we're going to want to get some degree of in independence if we don't have it already we need to go to the time and trouble and effort to get the skills and knowledge and capability together so that we can have a degree of financial independence and that therefore then you can uh essentially uh follow your sexual desires more more you know cleanly okay so we don't have such a compromised situation potentially with some mixed motivations there so what does this look like to me i'm not even sure it's like i'm not sure why we are even questioning this other than you say uh the individual says well what mistakes am i making it's it's chasing my head around well the mistake you i the only mistake you made was you you apparent you may have missed some cues that this guy is heavily councilmatic strategy oriented um but that are now evident okay and so if that's the case and that this is a very troublesome characteristic for you i would say get the hell out um in other words uh if it's not such trouble troublesome thing to you and you can put this characteristic into a cost-benefit analysis and make peace with it for uh the upsides that the person brings to the relationship fine but you this individual doesn't sound like such a person and many women are not such a person and so in that case i would say hey you know what are you doing where's uh why is this a valuable relationship to continue so uh in this case you can get our session with either me or jen and we can try to figure it out all right what else do you see there jen yeah i would say the only you know the main mistake that i see is maybe missing the casual meeting cues but also sort of um expecting maybe maybe listening to too much evolutionary psychology and expecting a relationship to adhere to these rules of rewardedness and so i'm you know i'm a seven he's a four therefore this should be a stable pair bond forever and ever and never amen and you're sort of staking it on that instead of like what i would expect to hear would be something like my ex cheated on me even though he's been telling me how how much he loves me and planning a future with me and how we're going to live happily ever after and how he's never met someone that he loves as much as me i'm not hearing any of that in this question you know i'm not hearing any of those kind of shared signals of um yeah he really values me i really value him for more than his um sort of provisional security value um and the fact that he's you know down down enough rungs on the ladder that i feel that he's not going to cheat on me but but very likely what could have happened here is that he he picked up on that kind of contempt you know that sort of like um like yes you don't respect me you don't admire me you you're using me you you think i'm just going to be around because i'm this kind of less attractive overweight guy who can't you know who you're the best i'm going to do and um and so hey you know i'm not i'm not all in with you um i'll have some fun with you and maybe give you some superficial signals like here's a here's a ring but i'm not telling you i'm not future planning i'm not i'm not giving you those meaningful signals because i'm not getting them from you and so i think that's you know when when you're moving forward next time with somebody you want to be looking for meaningful authentic signs of esteem from them um rather than running it through the rewardedness calculator and thinking that you're on the you're you're on the safe side because that doesn't really tell you the whole story at all damn do you want a job as like a co-author of a book i'm writing [Laughter] that's really really good that's really good yeah i uh yeah i i don't i don't think i had 10 neurons yeah that were were said circle around and were seeing the this contempt signaling that you're talking about jen that's great the um one thing that is also impossible he wouldn't feel that yes of course yes the um i can also see um uh this interest interesting thing that we're seeing some more that the contempt signaling about she's telling us hey listen he's pretty dishonest and and uh uh grandiose about his finances right and so that's a that's a signal that that's a very interesting i mean again a lot of these things are are there's cues in the way this person's i mean these questions can be like rorschach's and so yeah you know it's very we're trying to read a bunch of things in but uh jen sniffed this contempt issue and um and there's a contempt in the report of basically reporting that this person is that to the best of your your assessment that they are grandiose over reporter of their financial capabilities and so that i mean how much respect could you have for someone who they're an intimate partner who's talking about marrying you and you think that they're that they're lying to you about their income by a factor of five to one and they're lying to you about the ring that they're gonna buy you by a factor of five to one those are astronomical exaggerations and if you think that's true why are we even talking about a relationship with such an individual so yeah this you're you're right jen you really put your finger on this is that this this is loaded with a lot of angles of feeling in this question it's a very rich question um but yeah one of the big ones is um yeah he showed me the ring gonna propose last ditch effort to get me to not break up with him which again so she's she's signaling you know we don't know when she's making that decision to break up was it in the aftermath of finding out about the cheating or what you know we're we're in the dark about some of these things but i guess the truth is is that um the the solution that that's actually kind of why i think i made the comment about the beginning that subjective versus objective don't don't be thinking that these are um that the mathematical laws which are observable at the population level don't hold with respect to every pair of individuals at all yeah not at all yeah no there's huge variation yeah so yeah so that's uh that that would be a mistake to be trying to live your life there you need to be much more concerned about exactly what jen is saying which is what are the cues of of that other individual's subjective evaluation of you and vice versa that's where all of the action is and the objectivity is nowhere and not through acts like the the ring thing that's that's like that's it there's something very performative about that that's devoid of authentic esteem signaling yeah like that's the that's what you read on the back of the cracker jack box that you're supposed to do with the ring that's inside the cracker jack box is to make a big speech about oh you know this is my last ditch effort to to save the relationship and please take this it's not it's not coming from this really authentic organic place of like oh my gosh you know you are the most valuable thing to me and i i can't possibly lose you i just right yeah that's a really yeah yeah absolutely but that's uh of course that's it and if that actually happened that is telling you how shallow this relationship is and yeah it's shallowness that's what it is what an interesting um what do you what do you call that commercial trade uh seems to be going on or there's another word for that but there's it's a fiduciary calculation that's going on inside her head and he would be reading that and then saying oh my god if i want you to stay let me show you the shiny rock i'm going to give you that's expensive i mean that is a that is a very strange looking um mess that sounds like it came out in 1952. you know it doesn't doesn't have any basis in in uh anything i'll i'll keep taking the train into the city and cheating on you all right yeah it does it has this it's really this is this empty sounding sort of thing i mean it's it's worth pointing out just explicitly too that these these sort of um rewardedness uh dynamics can be affected by other personality factors too quite apart from this whole contempt respect question so you know that that matters it's not just an objective beauty question for you for women you know it's it's you know his his evaluation of your mate worthiness is also an evaluation of your personality your intelligence your the whole package and so if that's not you you can look at yourself and evaluate yourself physically and say oh i'm three points ahead and so therefore i'm i'm that much more valuable to him than he is to me but you don't know how he's evaluating your personality and and how that's entering into the equation and how if your your seven is his seven those are separate questions but they're all related to again not being able to stand outside of any given relationship dynamic and quite know what you're looking at in terms of how those people are subjectively valuing each other absolutely wonderful all right let's show it what do we got yeah just have a follow-up question the um you one of you said that it's important to have you know authentic and meaningful esteemed dynamics and i'm curious if this particular couple hypothetically or another couple if they are um you know talking about this and and he explains to her that oh yeah you know i'm getting these signals of discussed and she goes well i did not mean to to signal that or maybe she did but now she's you know is it authentic if she now starts changing her behavior because she's heard some feedback over it and that she didn't naturally want to be nice to him essentially or i don't know if my question makes any sense but okay this is actually a really good question nathan and i'm going to wind out on this idea for a little bit okay so let's uh let's just briefly um let's briefly integrate what takes place in a psychological event okay so the uh just as the periodic table of elements is the is the foundation of chemistry to understand chemistry uh we could break it down all the way to physics but the level of chemistry is the level of analysis that's necessary for chemical chemistry problems so we don't need to know particle physics to understand it we need to know just a rudimentary physics the um in the same way the cost benefit analysis is the unit of psychological events so your your um psychologists uh don't know this by the way that's not a it's not a known fact but if if we if we piece take this apart this is obviously the case so you cannot say well the cost is x and know anything about how a person feels about whatever that goal is and any idea about whether or not they would pursue that goal none okay we say the cost is 47 it's like well do you have any idea that they're going to buy it or would how they would feel about it now you have to only know you must know both the cost and the benefit if you know the cost and the benefit then you can understand how much motivation there's going to be if the benefit is you know 17 gene units ahead the cost was three gene units then we can assume that that that is going to be a highly beneficial ratio okay so the cost benefit analysis uh is what is at the root of feeling and feeling is the precursor for action so motivation takes place uh as a result of the cost benefit analysis of any value proposition and the nervous system is simply a device that is essentially integrating three sets of information the sensory information that's coming into the sensory system that is interacting with the universal value system of the species uh that that particular organism has its own individual settings so some kids like broccoli and some kids don't but all kids like to eat you know food and they will be willing to eat vegetables if they're sufficiently hungry etc okay so you're you have a universal value system that uh that gives you a a essentially an instruction to be an or you know an organism of that species then and and that that universal value system has the individual differences in your genetics uh that give rise to what we're going to call your personality that of how that value system is actually calibrated uh you know as a result of the the configuration of your genes the i.e how open you are how how disagreeable you are all those things are are essentially values uh assessments of you know a given type of situation and then how an individual would respond to it like gee if i can go on a vacation anywhere where do i go to buy celia from tulare or do i go you know to kathmandu those are openness questions and different people value those things differently but everyone values possible some degree of exploration if if only to walk around the block and look at houses you know six houses down from mama as opposed to next door so um so we've got a universal value system embedded in that is your personality because you got your particular uh your particular nuances of your individual value system and how it's constructed you have the sensory information that's coming in and hitting that the value system in addition to that you have memory systems that are in fact um data that exists as a database that has to be put into the thing so if we have for example a not very skittish rabbit and it's on you know looking at a meadow and it it remembers that there's carrots um it it's got a certain amount of motivation to go get those carrots i.e universal value system of rabbits and that particular rabbit right this minute happens to be hungry and as a result he's pretty eager and he does not actually take as much care as usual in looking for a possible threat from a predator so now he gets run down by a predator dives into the rabbit hole survives tomorrow when he's out there looking at the same carrots he's now going to be more careful because he's got a memory system and the memory system is simply an is an increased precision estimate about what we think the reality is because our sensory system is only an approximation of that reality it's just the data that's in front of us it's not all of the data that might be relevant to what the real situation is so that's what your memory system is okay so anyway so now what do we have so i'm going to put this all together we've got a sensory system bringing in the information we've got a universal value system that's evaluating the cost and benefits of various uh threats and opportunities uh being shaped around the individual personality that is also going to be impacted by their memory system because the memory system is actually saying well the cost benefit analysis that you're seeing with your eyes and ears and your smeller isn't actually quite as accurate we're going to modify that and realize ooh there's threats out here you're not considering so don't be so char charging over those carrots be a little more careful than you would otherwise be that those those computations then give rise to your feelings so your feelings are an analog translation of the cost benefit analysis which is effectively a mathematical process where uh where your brain is a is an analog computer that doesn't use digital operations on on numbers it uses a magic tricks uh in in order it's like a slide rule okay it can it can do computations even though there's no computative process other than something that's already embedded in the system and so uh and they're not perfect they are they are heuristics their their bags of tricks and so as a result your feelings are the result of your nervous system's best estimate as to the the the value of the existing opportunities that are in front of you or the the magnitude of the threats so in all of this guess what we don't have choice because you don't have a choice about about any of this these are automated responses and computations so your feelings are not subject subject to you actually changing them okay the only thing that can change your feeling and there is something that would change your cost benefit analysis uh and the only thing that's going to change your cost benefit analysis is new information okay so new information is the agent of change okay new information may or may not shift the cost-benefit analysis enough that it actually changes the trajectory of feelings and therefore the trajectory of behavior okay so when we start talking about how to fix a relationship the truth of the matter is is that all we can do is try to illuminate more information that's all we can do okay there's no like oh we're gonna do dr phil's plan to fix your relationship good freaking luck okay your relationship may have the potential to be good but right now it's not good only because there are misunderstandings of the truth if there are misunderstandings of the truth then we may be able to uncover the truth if we're sufficiently sophisticated at trying to figure out how to get to it which is what jen and i do for a living okay you just heard actually two questions which i'm slightly embarrassed to say maybe i'm a little short of sleep but you just heard a superb and subtle mind look at two of those questions and see a whole bunch of ways that the truth could actually be that i actually hadn't considered okay and so you know and i'm not huck finn okay so the point is is that you can have truths about your relationship that you may not know you your your your understanding of the truth about your relationship is an approximation if you are confused and in conflict about your relationship it's because you have two alternative estimations of what the truth is and those two or more but certainly too okay and so you're in conflict about what it is that you're actually seeing now for my eyeball dude estimate of those two questions it's like well i'll tell you what my eyeball estimate tells me you're in the wrong place okay that's it i'm done pretty much now uh jen is saying wait a minute wait a minute there's like seven other little things that could be that you actually could be in the right place but you're there's some misunderstandings about what the underlying truth is however in both these cases i think jen would probably agree with me you know the the thumb is pretty heavy on the scale okay probably right it's part of why more of those little permutations come out with the context-free written question like this where you're not actually talking to the person and you're not hearing them say between the lines and you know with their tone of voice and all the other ways that people communicate right that they they know that that's not where the truth is right um and so this kind of this this format lends itself to being like well you know we would we want there there are a couple of clarifying questions just to rule these things out um but yes occam's razor is usually the the simplest answer is usually the correct answer yeah not always yeah but usually i will ask questions that are kind of very right-brained um to try to get a feel for how you feel about the partner okay exactly and so and that that that leaks out all over the world leaks out all over the place okay so but the point is is that so to nathan's question um a person can perform in some way to try to like the classic of oh we're gonna fix our relationship so you know you know you i could see that i upset you you say this i say that oh let's do it differently okay well mostly what's happening is that at the root of all the argumentation and all the conflict is what you have is an esteemed dynamic crisis so that what is actually happening is is that there are cues that are being signaled that one person is not valuing the other person that highly and the other person is picking up that on that and they are they're either hurting and sulking and hurting and and etc or they could also and likely are going to be some degree angry and they could also very likely retaliate okay so the notion of you essentially dis send your send your disinterest or or disgust or or lack of motivation and excitement about me then i am going to also do the same to you now it's interesting that that appears to be the evolutionary best system for human beings to reproduce their dna okay so it's interesting that that is generally what it is so if somebody uh picks an argument with me i get oppositional and i start looking for holes in their argument i try to bury them what i don't do is say i i don't say well wait a second wait a second let me really understand where you're coming from please tell me in detail what is it you're thinking and why it is that you said that that is not the species that i know okay the species that i know is you attack me i'm teching you back i.e axelrod and hamilton's tit for tat strategy now the uh so if there's something that we want to do and instruct and illuminate illuminated here at beecher jeans it would be that your instincts for tit-for-tat strategy are counterproductive to digging the gold out of the possibility that you've actually got a relationship that's worth uh that you know that's worth actually uh uh trying to steer out of a dangerous uh place that may that people may decide to abandon the relationship because they get caught in a vicious cycle of negative signaling and they're lost and they can't get out of it okay uh they're in a hobbesian trap so that that is a very distinct you know that that is an occasional possibility and even if it doesn't destroy a relationship it can be a miserable month or a miserable three weeks uh if we're in such a set of circumstances so beating your genes uh looks at this and says wait a second i i can can document when i where i have been hit by this individual i'm she's given me the cold shoulder she made this little sniping comment okay um she didn't do this or did that so i i could be in a situation where i'm feeling really irritated abandoned not appreciated uh hurt feeling like i want to strike back send my signals of being really shitty uh and therefore signaling that i may in fact uh uh withdrawal and i may um there's another fancy word that we use jenna i can't remember defects defect oh yeah good thank god so uh so anyway so i could be thinking and feeling those things and yet um we all know what that feels like if two people get stirred up in that and then we know what happens if there's enough will and we grit our teeth and then we have a conversation and somehow we get through to a misunderstanding and then we it gets we get resolved with affirmations of esteem signaling and then the the couple is transmitted transcended a crisis now most of the time that's not the reality of what's happening okay uh most of the time if we're in pretty shitty circumstances it's because somebody really doesn't value somebody else enough uh for a relationship to be a really good one and as a result there's a uh the the sniping and problems that we're seeing uh are are actually the result of of sort of legitimate emergency signals uh particularly from the from an individual that feels like they're not sufficiently valued they're you know they're hurting the other person may be disengaging or they may not feel sufficiently valued and what we have is a is a vicious cycle uh that is that is spinning it could be spinning slowly if they're really stable people and they've got three kids and a bunch of financial entanglements and a bunch of family and a church and all that kind of crap so it could be that it spins very very slowly and they keep their emotional distance from each other or it could spin very quickly okay where they don't have that many things in the way or they're inherently more impulsive as individuals etc and or someone is more disagreeable and unstable and so therefore it could spin pretty fast as well but in any event if you're in a relationship that has you puzzled uh and you are struggling to try to understand whether this is a place you should be or that you shouldn't be or if it is a place that you should be or you're not sure how would you find out um what we you know what would we do to resurrect such a thing because right now it's an emotional three and a half and it should be at least a seven to even bother to be there so what what do we do the what we try to do is we try to get to uh the heart of of you know essentially what you know where is there still a legitimate esteem in the relationship do we have instead of disinterest and kind of dislike and lack of lack of admiration etc but what we haven't said is bitterness over some hurt feelings over some signals that maybe have spun ourselves into a trouble and we actually are we're actually in trouble uh out of a communication crisis of a tit-for-tat strategy that's now on the loose as opposed to any real lack of esteem between these two individuals if they could spin themselves out of the vicious cycle and back to a virtuous cycle okay so the the long and short of it how would we do that well the only way you're going to do that is to find information that confirms the fact that you're in the right place and that your your worst case scenario inferences that you're in the wrong place are sending off emergency signals and tit-for-tat defensive strategies okay well how are we going to do that well we're going to need to have a generalized strategy of essentially crystal clear with a nice big space in front of us and we let them begin and we are not going to interrupt and we are not going to argue and we are not going to cross-examine and we are not going to contradict we are going to say listen this relationship is really super important to me and i think it's important to you but i don't know exactly how and so i'm really afraid that i don't know where this goes but i know that this is not an emotional place for us to be living so i'm hoping that there's a misunderstanding that's at the root of some of this so what i want to do is i want you to tell me everything that's going on with how it is you feel what you're upset with me about what you're disappointed with me about etc and i will i will listen to this and i'm not going to argue with you and i'm not going to contradict you and i'm not going to interrupt you i may ask you for clarity but i want to hear it all because that's the only way the only way out is for us to understand okay you can uh that that is that in principle is exactly what i do with couples and as a third party i say to them i need to understand okay and so right in front of each other we go through this process and uh we can also you know i get fancier because we'll also do this with flood the circuit first which is a huge technique and so before you would ask a partner to do this you you might need to flood his or her circuit and you say listen here's why i want to have this conversation and this is the deal i value this i value that you're amazing about this you're amazing about that this is what we have together blah blah blah super valuable to me okay but i'm hurt and i'm angry and i'm worried and i'm anxious and i'm thinking about leaving and i'm thinking that you're thinking about leaving and i'm thinking about are we just being fools here and pretending that we have a relationship that's really not there like what are we doing and the only thing that i know how to do is to grip my teeth and try to find out what is you know what is where you're really at where i've done things that you might have misinterpreted uh that have hurt your feelings i don't have any idea all i want to know is what is the truth of where we're at the truth is the only thing that can fix it um many people will get a quarter of the way down this road they smell that the truth is smells bad and they just back away and patch it up because they're not ready to face any defection yet or or you know they got reasons to continue okay until the kid leaves for college then then we're not even going to go to therapy screw it right here okay the uh so but that that that's a obviously a super long-winded answer to a very good question i.e what can we do and the answer is the only thing you can do is find out what the truth is the truth is the all yeah go ahead jen but the truth the truth doesn't mean that it solves everything it's right right brings everything to light so so people need to understand that yeah you can crystal clear and you get yourself out of the vicious cycle of the sniping and the bitterness and the misinterpretations and so you clear that smoke out of the way yes but there's still the truth could be that there's a fundamental unsolvable conflict of interest here yes um and that's why you have all of the signaling going on right so we hope that it's not yes um we hope that it is a a solvable problem possibly uh downstream from an unsolvable problem that you can't live with right but you know you have to the crystal clear processes is bringing that into the light and looking at it from every angle and figuring that out and getting out of the the defensiveness and the um the avoidance and everything else that that sort of masks it yeah so it's not it's not like a cure-all doesn't mean that your relationship can be saved it just means that if it can be this is the only way it can be that's right that does and the um i have a uh i have a a technique i don't i don't know if i've told people uh this technique um maybe i have and god knows might be buried in you know feature jeans 113 who the heck knows at this point the um it's on the spreadsheet yeah um i uh had a you know a partner to me that was super important and the um but there was a problem and that partner would uh get get very anxious and think that i was defecting uh when i wasn't and and that uh that person would instead of just just crying she had a characteristic of being really pissy as hell and as a result uh as a result of that i would get defensive and irritated and this went on for quite a while and and uh as it started to look like this was an impasse a process that couldn't be solved uh the next thing that i did was i actually tried to exercise tremendous uh patience and self-control to not do that uh to to not fight back fire with fire and with overwhelming her with evidence but instead listen to her super carefully while i well i let her essentially process her anxiety and her suspicions okay when i did that then i would be very calmly trying to go through the evidence with her and really try to show her no actually that isn't true turns out that didn't work okay so the very best that i had failed okay so it turned out that something else worked and i don't know what how i came up with it i just did it i just did it one day and it was in it it was like a last ditch type of experiment because these kinds of uh quote arguments and and uh uh airing of the grievances and anger and and suspicion and hostility all this stuff these things would be you know could be a four-hour process were a two-hour process that would then linger for three weeks and it's like man this is just too outrageously time and energy expensive and emotionally expensive and this i and so one day i decided to gamble on a shortcut and i just uh i when she's all hostile and pissed off i actually went up to her and i put my arms around her and i held her super tight to me and i whispered in her ear and i whispered about how how valuable she was okay and i just kept doing that and i just kept doing that and i just you i and she she was just frozen right there like it's not like i'm the big strong guy stopping her from backing up and whacking me she could have that wasn't the point she knew this was me putting my wings around her okay and so and what happened after about the first you know 30 or 40 or 50 seconds as she started sobbing okay and then a little while later she started laughing while she was crying and then she said you're tricking me this was hilarious okay in other words i'm suspicious that you're cheating and that you're scheming and blah blah blah i think you're tricking me because now i'm feeling really reassured and i'm relieved as hell okay it's hilarious okay and so that turned out to be unbelievably effective all right now so i.e what is the truth of the relationship my previous estimation of the truth was i can't get through to this chick i can't do it i've given my very best you know i'm a 20-year 25-year veteran psychologist for christ's sakes and i'm doing everything i can on multiple shots at this thing and i cannot get through and i'm at the end of my rope okay and then one day i decide screw it i just i don't know what what it was just some right brain bolt of of thing maybe i saw it in a movie i don't know why but i did it okay i had nothing to lose and i did this and it was astounding and as a result of that that changed my eggshells and anxiety and worries about where her mind was at because if it turned out that old faithful was going to go off a month later which it generally would then i had a weapon and i i you know it's like oh it worked again worked the second time oh work the third time okay and so it just always worked so what did we get down to i found down at the heart of the steam dynamic i found another way rather than arguing and contradicting and blah blah blah trying to convince i found a different way to do it and as a result uh took an enormous burden off that relationship so that's a so that's why you know there's nothing like life experience and desperation and you know and and and just sort of you know clinical experience etc so sometimes when we feel like we're in an in an impasse uh we might not be there just may be another way we have to go about communicating something that we desperately need communicated and understood and believed so that's just uh just another little caveat to it's you know we're not necessarily exactly sure where we are but we usually do know you know we we usually know but that doesn't mean that there isn't some there isn't some digging to do that might be very fruitful and that's what that's what we're here for i think maybe you intuited that technique um because there's sort of a there's a fundamental just just like we will often say if you don't understand a situation look for the status right yeah this truism of human relationships i have this this hair brained hypothesis that when it comes to male female relations um often it the fundamental the the the kernel of the conflict for her is about abandonment and for him it's about respect yes and and so you know if if all else fails kind of turning it to look at it from that angle and being like is is there an issue of abandonment here for her that is coming up and and so you're you're feeling that at some level and maybe even like left brain identifying it but it's not until you address it by by swaddling her yes and making her feel very safe and protected and included and loved um that that she can relax and and so yeah yeah i can totally see how that works didn't work in the end no but that's it but that was fair in other words but we but it was a massive improvement and a very important lesson well it allows the the unresolvable conflict to be fully exposed and examined yes you know exactly until you get there and you look at it and and decide is this something we can live with or not right until you until you distill it down to us at its essence you don't know you all you know is all of the noise and defensiveness and and craziness yes so you have to get out of that to figure out if it is something that you can move forward with you
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