Couples Therapist: Why Your Brain Turns Your Partner Into An Enemy - Stan Tatkin

Key Takeaway

Make “repair within 30 minutes” a relationship rule. After conflict, do not litigate intent or wait until you feel ready; offer a clean apology for your partner’s experience, ask what would help them feel settled, and confirm “we’re okay.” Then, when calm, identify the trigger and agree on one concrete safeguard for next time. Fast repair prevents small ruptures from becoming threat memories that make partners scan each other as enemies.

Episode Overview

Stan Tatkin explains why romantic relationships activate ancient attachment and survival systems, causing partners to misread one another as threats under stress. He argues that lasting love is earned through deliberate design: shared purpose, explicit agreements, rapid repair, and habits that preserve safety and collaboration. Chris Williamson explores how unresolved conflict, memory, distance, and ambiguity can turn a couple from a team into two self-protective individuals.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Couples Therapist: Why Your Brain Turns Your Partner Into An Enemy - Stan Tatkin from Modern Wisdom. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello, friends. I'm bringing a brand new live show across the UK and Ireland this October. It's stories, psychology, audience Q&As, and whatever happens when thousands of overthinkers voluntarily leave the house and end up in the same room together. I'd love to see you there. The last two are completely sold out, so make sure that you snag tickets now using the link in the description or heading to chriswilliamson.live. Dublin's already sold out. Loads of venues are limited. Tickets are very limited, so get yours now. chriswilliamson.live. You're great.

Your work is fantastic. You rule. Thank you. If I was to try and summarize your world view on relationships, allow me to step into your skin and wear it for a second, I would summarize it as love by design, not desire. Is that a fair, like it's thought not felt as relationships, that design versus desire thing? How far away am I? I think I prefer earned love. Earned love on a daily basis by knowing how to hack the brain, the neuroendocrine system, which we can talk about, by designing the relationship to protect feelings, to enhance feelings, to allow two different people under stress to maintain a collaborative and cooperative attitude.

That is a hard get, because that takes a certain amount of planning, predicting and planning and preparing what could go wrong between human beings. Why are romantic attachment relationships neurochemically so hard to navigate? Well, they're hard because in the attachment world, if you understand or buy the idea of a primary attachment relationship, a primary attachment relationship is one that tends to be dyadic with human primates. We pair, bond, and herds. And the romantic adult primary attachment relationship is most likely the earliest one, which is predicated on survival.

So the attachment system is actually an existential glue that holds us together. It's the I can't quit you biology. We confuse it for love. And because it goes back to the earliest survival relationship, that's why breaking up also is hard to do. That's why it has a very long memory, because it reminds us of that earliest dependency relationship, whereas other relationships tend to not do that. So we're reliving our childhoods, in a way. We're reliving our relationships, how we felt with all of these important originals that we were around in this relationship that we call a romantic adult relationship.

But it is 12 and before. That is generally how I will think of it, is that we have the parents in our heads that we had around 12 and before that time, even if our parents, and they do, changed a great deal for the better or for the worse, we still draw upon that earliest, because that's the root of our experience through thousands upon thousands of interactions, starting from infancy, post-adult. So powerful. Is love enough to maintain a relationship? Absolutely not. No feeling is, because feelings come and go.

And besides, who knows what your definition of love is? It may be very different than mine. And even if I were to describe my definition of love, in action, my expectations of love may be quite different than what I say. So there you already have a problem. But if you're basing your life on emotion, which is like a roller coaster, then your life is like a roller coaster. So I think the smartest and the wisest, and the way that it's always worked in terms of long-term relationships between individuals of equal power, adults, is that you have to have first a shared purpose, a reason for being in this relationship, not based on feelings, and a vision of where are we headed?

What's the end point? Are we ride or die? Is it all the way till I'm wiping your butt? You're wiping my butt in old age? Where are we headed and why? What's the point of us? Who or what do we serve? Only purpose that's based on a selfish reason will carry the day, because we're too unreliable as a species. Our species is notably historically moody and fickle and impulsive and unpredictable, sometimes opportunistic, warlike, xenophobic, easily influenced by groups and other people. So we're not great over the long run in unions.

Therefore, we have to account for going through time together. And that would be going through some changes. So we need an invention. We need a design from the ground up, which is a made up thing, right? All relationships are made up. That would sustain us in the long run and would account for all of that will room necessary as we change through time, right? Otherwise, we're not gonna make it somehow. That's issue one. Issue two is we have to understand the forces that push us around, namely our survival instinct, because it's always on.

And because this relationship is unlike any other on the planet, because of its memory, I'm most like that earliest one, based on survival. It has a long memory and we tend to be proxies for everybody who came before, right? We tend to, it's a very projective system. The chances of us accruing threat memory by getting things wrong based on memory and appraisal is 100%. And so if we're not really good at knowing and understanding how to minimize threat and stay collaborative under the most stress and pressure, we're going to accrue threat memory, which is a biological matter and eventually takes people down.

So you're saying we need to respect the biology by in advance having structures in place and principles that keep guardrails in so that we're not relying on the ebbs and flows of how we feel. Like any other, any other union of any kind that's professional of any kind, we plan on our devils, not our angels, right? Couples plan on their angel. That's a big mistake. What does that mean? Devils we are if the opportunity arises, if we're under enough load bearing, if we're in enough pain or enough pressure, enough stress.

Again, emotions, you know, if I'm going to behave according to how I feel, which is pretty much everybody on the planet most, then it stands to reason that we're going to have a hard time getting along, right? And so this just has to do with predicting what could go wrong and planning for it ahead of time instead of just falling into it, which is what couples always do, right? Couples don't predict, plan and prepare for what could go wrong based on what has gone wrong. Nobody else does that.

Medicine, we do post-mortems, right? Let's not kill the patient again. But couples don't do that. They just repeat, repeat. We predict what could go wrong in the police force, in military, in medicine, in science, in business. Couples don't do that. They just walk into the same situations live without being prepared. We would never get involved with a group of people if we didn't know what the culture was and how are we going to be protected from each other because we're animals. Couples don't have any governance, any way of protecting each other from each other because they don't set it up.

So couples are the only system, only voluntary system of free, fair, volunteer system of individuals coming together of equal power and authority, at least on the face of it, should be on based on terms and conditions that do not have any of this ever. And that is why they're predicted not to last very long. Or if they do, one or both people are not going to be happy or not going to feel safe and secure because there's no social contract system of making agreements based on purpose, based on what is good.

So say you both, we both, right? What is best? So say we both, or what is right? Those are the three. And without that, it's going to be the wild ones. Does that mean that discussing non-negotiables and practical things in advance and as early as possible is actually the romantic thing to do? It's not. You don't put that into the, hey, honey, let's go out to dinner and have a nice romantic dinner and everything. And let's talk about if we have any deal breakers. You could, I guess.

It's not, you know, it's dual purpose. But deal breaker is, should be known ahead of time. I want a baby. I have to have a baby. You hate kids. And let's get married. So that is what people do. And that's like not smart because that can't work. I want monogamy and you want polyamory. Well, neither of us are wrong. We have a right to want what we want and get what we want, but we can't do business together because that's going to cause a lot of trouble.

So those are deal breakers, big ticket items that couldn't work because we're pointing in two different directions. Having a specific shared purpose and vision is still important outside of deal breakers, I have to imagine. So if you look at the human condition and how people have sustained in groups, groups don't stay together very long or they don't get along with each other very well if they don't have a shared purpose for being together. You and I are going to start a band. That's our purpose. We want to start a band.

We want to, what is our goal or our vision? We want to get a record deal, at least initially. So if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have reason to hang together very much and we would probably not get along because we tend to pick at each other if we don't have a shared purpose, right? That's if we're spending a lot of time together and a shared reason for doing this. Otherwise we tend to otherize. We tend to pick at each other's differences. We don't look naturally to where we agree and where we are the same.

People who are consensus makers have to do that. But at the average Joe, because of energy conservation, meaning we're meant to do the least amount necessary biologically, all living things, we're lazy and we won't do things that we should do because we don't think we have to. So this whole idea of we're in it to win it, we're a survival team, we want to win, we want to make money, we want to succeed, we want to survive, all of these things are essential for keeping people on the path together and not paying attention so much to their differences.

Otherwise we fight. And when it happens in a country such as ours, that's when we see civil war or tribalization or a massive amount of splintering, right? Because there's no more centralized sense of purpose that holds us together that's believable and a vision, an American dream, right? And so things break down. So if that is true with all systems, large and small, it goes to follow that a couple would be no different. If they have no shared reason for being at any given time, they're gonna fight or they'll drift because that's what holds us together.

What's the importance of agreements? That's all we've got to keep us from being harmful to each other. All we have is our PACs, our agreements, our social contracts, civilization's predicated on social contracts, the first laws of religion, even though it was a social contract with God, an Old Testament God that would reign in your bedroom 40 days, 40 nights if you disobeyed, that was a powerful thing to get people to start to behave. It was the first way of getting people to stop harming each other with the 10 commandments, right?

So everything is predicated on agreements. Otherwise we go to war, we do harm. Like I said, we're selfish, self-centered, opportunistic animals. If we can get away with something, we will. That's in our DNA. Only norms and laws and principles and rules keep us from doing that and allow us to stay together in safety and harmony. Otherwise we wouldn't. No difference with a couple. So they have to come up with this as well. In other news, have you ever noticed how some websites make it ridiculously easy to buy while some feel infinitely harder?

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Then you'd have to describe that to each other, define that. What does that really mean? Same with a relationship. What does it mean in practical purposes? If this happens, what will we do? If that happens, what will we do? Are there any exceptions to this? What could go wrong with this idea of putting ourselves first? What happens if this relationship crashes and burns? We put ourselves first. What does that do for our kids? What does that do for our own health? So, it doesn't make sense.

Maybe we put religion first. That's fine. But you'd have to think it through because you're planning your life because your lives depend on this. How you're going to rule, how you're going to govern, what decisions you're going to make is going to be predicated on what is the highest priority, right? Otherwise, you're not a team. It'll be chaos when load-bearing hits. You're going to be unprepared. So, it's all practical. It's all tactical. It's not about emotion. It's about what would be the best thing and what one thing must be protected at all costs in order for everything else to thrive.

That's how to think of it, right? But it has to be defined, has to be done judiciously because, again, it's no small thing. Your happiness, safety, and security, everything's predicated on your design. What's the threat response based on memory? Well, memory is a problem. We're memory animals. Everything we do is by memory. Most of our day is memory-run. It's automatic. We're not thinking. We're not using energy-expending areas of the brain that use critical thinking. We save that for novelty. We save that for our work. We save that for other things.

So, we're just walking through the day doing things automatically, more flexibly based on memory. Because of our survival instinct, negative memory, negative experience is favored in memory because we have to remember where we're hurt because of danger. Survival is at the top of our subcortical drive, right? And it does not equivocate. It does not differentiate. You hurt me. If you didn't fix it right away and you do it again, then I'm going to predict you're going to do it again and again and again, which you will feel attacked by.

But that is me protecting myself. I'm using pattern recognition to sweep the environment for cues. And every time you repeat something or we repeat something that's threatening, the array of threat cues that I'm looking for increase. Naturally, it makes sense. It doesn't know the difference between you holding a gun on me and you looking askance that I view as a judgment, as an attack, as a criticism, right? And so, this becomes problematic if we're not careful, which is why there are ways to prevent this from taking hold because it does have a snowball effect.

It sounds like it sensitizes your system over time. Yeah, it has to because we have to survive. This part of our brain is lightning fast. I see it, I shoot it. And that makes sense. If your life depends on making a quick decision and an action that protects you from a danger, it makes sense that this can be a problem in relationships because I will react very quickly based on my own narrative, history, memory, and I will likely be wrong and you will likely feel threatened by my assuming, which you will then protect yourself and behave in a way that's threatening in return.

And therein lies the problem with the human condition, why we're better at war. We're just not great at relationships over the long run. So, there are ways to remedy this if you know what you're up against. One is quick repair. Quick repair is a way to keep memory from going into long-term memory where it's the gift that keeps on giving. And sadly, most people don't fix things quickly. They don't fix things. I'm sorry, you're right, that was stupid. I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry, I love you.

And then move on, right? They delay it, they don't do it. They apologize in the wrong way. And so, the beat goes on. And this is why families lose their kids, estrangement, that's why people get sued. That's why in the old days, people challenged each other, a duel to the death, because we remember harm done. We don't forget it. The person who harms us does, but because of the adrenaline that's created when we feel misunderstood, hurt, judged, something's unfair, unjust, that creates a lot of juice to go into long-term memory unless you fix it right away, in which case it doesn't.

So that's one of the main reasons to grow up and do what we invented. The reason we invented Apologies Immense was to hold on to our relationships. And if you too want to hold on to your relationship with your kid or your spouse or your parents, then you got to learn how to follow in your sword and only apologize without quivication, without qualification explanation, without any other qualifier, if you know what's good for you. Because that in the real world is the only thing that will relax another person, the only thing.

And I have to apologize for what you think I did, not what I think I did. I think how hard that is for us because we're so prideful, we think that we're always right. And that's not true, by the way. We're hardly ever right by much. But it's our arrogance, it's our hubris to think that our communication was spot on. I heard you clearly. My memory is great. My perception is correct, yours isn't. And none of this I can prove. None of this is true at any given time.

It's all false. And yet, we'll die on that hill. We're dumb. It's so fascinating that intense negative experiences, if repaired quickly, have basically a completely different future ahead of them than ones that are left to fester. That if you're in a relationship which has regular rupture without repair, and especially without repair quickly, that makes it painful in the moment and more painful in the future, and sensitizes your system to detecting this happening again, even perhaps when it's not, which means that your worldview is going to appear increasingly deranged to the other person who needs to apologize based on your interpretation, not on their projection.

Right. It's vicious. It's a really badly designed system. Well, it's not designed, like I said, remember, we used to die at 15 or 30 tops, right? We didn't live that long. We would pair bond for four years and then leave and then mix up the gene pool. That satisfied the ways of natural laws and that nature's, right? Nature didn't plan on us doing what we do today. We're on our own. That's why we have to invent our meaning. We're not born into a world with meaning, right?

Clearly, we're not born into a world where we get why we're here and how we got here and where we're going. That's the whole existential dilemma, right? And it's the angst. You know, we're going to die. We're alone. We don't know why we're here. And life has no meaning. Right? That's very depressing. So we create meaning, right? Same thing. But meaning also involves governance. How are we going to protect each other from each other? That is not by nature, right? We are predators. We're apex predators, as a matter of fact.

We're nice when we're happy, right? Yeah, but you may not want to be around us if we're unhappy or kind of nasty. Unless there are norms, you know. Sweetheart, you know, my 14-year-old daughter, you can be angry. You cannot walk around and destroy the atmosphere here for everybody who's in the house. That's a community issue. You can't do it. So stop it, right? Only that stops that kind of behavior. No, you can't do this. I know you want to do it, but I'll show you you can't.

Try. And I will show you you can't. And that gives rise to an idea that there are limits. There are boundaries. There are things you can and cannot do. But let's say I don't do that. Let's say I give in. Then you can get away with anything, right? Because there is no God. I did that. It doesn't happen naturally. You know, Lord of the flies. You know, we're animals. And the off the product line, you know, human primate isn't great. You know, you know, civilization, you know, over so many years of, you know, building complexity socially, emotionally, and ideals and values and morals, principles.

That, you know, the whole span of history, of course, it's a blip. But in our time, it's a long period to get here. And we're still a mess. And so, you know, again, don't be naive. You are responsible for this relationship. No one else is. You're the only ones who are going to benefit and are also going to suffer if you're not an alliance, right? If you're not working together, you can't work. If you're not able to work together as a two person system of we and us interdependently having the same things to gain and lose.

Are you going to survive this life? Really? With all the slings and arrows and all the things that happen and the indifference of others, which, you know, just test that out and the chips are down, people will be indifferent to your concerns. And that's just the way it is. And so not knowing that, preparing is just simply not being aware and not being an adult and in reality. Somewhere along the way, low energy just gets accepted as a part of getting older. Turns out there's a reason for that.

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That's timeline.com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. I've heard you say that if you leave those memories to encode in long term for too long, you can end up seeing your partner more as a predator than a lover. Yeah, the subcortical brain does not differentiate. What's happening neurochemically in the brain? Well, there's an intentional center. The salience network in the brain is what causes me to look, right? You know, I hear a sound and I look. That's a salience network that's directing me to what's most important at this moment.

And there are other networks that are involved here that are fear-related and threat-related that are involved in this one network. And so I begin to hone in on your face because you repeatedly do something that reminds me of something that makes me feel small and devalued. Okay? You may not intend to do that, but your intentions aren't the matter here. I'm picking up a threat memory, a cue from your face because I'm vigilant. I now have to look for this because I've been hurt too much.

You feel attacked by it, but I'm simply taking care of myself. I don't control this. It is pushing me around because I don't understand it, right? I assume that everything I'm picking up is correct. I don't check. Are you doing that thing right now? Right? I just shoot first, assuming you are doing it. And that's because these areas don't have an executive function. They're not meant to have an executive function. And an executive function takes time and resources. That is why that, you know, when we're relaxed, we have all oars in the water.

We can think. We can error. correct. We can think in a relativistic way and not in a dominant end way, right? I am certain. No, maybe you're right, but I'm relaxed. I can do that. As soon as my blood pressure and heart rate go up to a certain level, my brain changes. I literally don't have a capacity to do that because the executive areas demand a lot of resources to run oxygen, glucose, and blood. That is now going to my striated muscles because I'm starting to get into fight or flight.

I'm getting hyper aroused and there's a brain change. I'm altered. I no longer care about your interests and it takes very little. This is Robert Sapolsky's work, Not Just. Very little glucocorticoids coursing through my veins for me not to give a damn about you. You lose me as an audience if you're not careful. You don't even think because you haven't noticed you've lost me as an audience. I feel unsafe. Therefore, talk to the hand. I care only about my interests. You get nothing. That's how sensitive the system is because I've determined I'm not safe on a subcortical level.

Now, I may not know this, but you will if you pay attention. I will know when you fall out of safety because I'm watching you if I am. That's why in each other's care is we're psychobiologically wired in close proximity to pick up social emotional cues faster from the other person than we are from our own bodies. That makes us prime for something called interactive regulation or co-regulation. That's another kind of teamwork, but it's more autonomic. This is a very stupid part of us, but we'll thank it because we dodged a bullet.

I have to understand that you and I have to talk to each other in a particular way. Otherwise, you'll confuse me as an adversary. This is what's hard about secure functioning. The formula really is I have to take care of myself and you at the same time under stress or you will confuse me for an adversary. It will compel you to then take care of yourself only. Now, we're one-person systems. We're no longer in a team sport. We're in a solo sport. There are no exceptions to this, by the way.

They're all people. Does this explain how resentment accumulates in relationships and relationships start to look very deranged from both the outside and the inside? One of the greatest causes of sustained anger is injustice. The other is helplessness. Any system that's too unfair, too unjust, and too insensitive can't last because it's unfair, unless it's an employer asymmetric relationship where I have to suck it up because I want the job and I need the money. In an equal system that's voluntary, if it's not fair and just and I'm getting the short end of the stick, you should keep your eyes open at night because that never ends well in the human field.

Insecure functioning is too unfair. It's good to be king and I get things at your cost not realizing that we're tied together psychobiologically. Anything I do to you is going to happen to me. There's no decoupling that unless this is an autocracy, unless I am the dictator, in which case I still better keep my eyes open at night. Then I get to do everything, and you have to do it, but that's not the reality of a free and fair union of equals in adulthood. The expectation is that it be fair.

Whether people say that or not, it is that way, and that's universal. How much can you prune those bad memories? How much harder is it to get over that once you've accumulated them? You can't get rid of these memories and you don't want to because that'll happen soon enough. I'm 72 and starting to happen with names, but you don't want to get rid of those memories. The only way to change the past is to change the future. There's no other way. These neuropathways are weighted by repeats, repeating things, and that's the worst.

This is the smart thing to do that we already know and couples don't do. One is, I will apologize forever for harm done. That is the right and just thing to do. In the real world, that is expected. I don't get a free pass in memory by saying, I don't need to apologize. I did my time in prison. That's not ever going to work. Same in couples. I will always apologize for what you feel I did. No problem, but let's put something in place, you and I, to prevent either of us from doing that again.

If only we did that, we'd be great because we're doing the same thing. We're learning from the past and we're creating a future that is different based on what we learned. Let's not do that again. Not you, not just me, either of us, because we're human. We could both do this. So, we found a place where we're vulnerable. Let's close that up as we go, but couples don't do that. They just walk right into the same thing again, rinse and repeat, and that is deadly. You do not want repetition.

It creates inflammation. Once that repetition starts, it accrues. Sadly, I deal with couples that have been together sometimes 12 years, but often 30 years. They're burdened not only by having to look back at all the resentments where they feel compelled to litigate the past, just rehearsing the same thing, that nothing comes of it. Besides, memory sucks and they're going to fight about memory. They're not watching where they're going, so they're repeating. The other thing is that when they do try to work on the relationship, now memory intrudes on the present and puts the kibosh on the future.

This is a big problem we're trying to solve. How so? How does this happen? You and I have been fighting for years. We both complain of unfairness, right? Neither of us trust each other now because we did that. We did that. Years of doing business poorly. Now we want to right things, right? We go to, let's say me or anybody who's proposing, let's design this thing from the ground up. As we're doing this, one of us is going to go, that's not going to work. Why are you depressed?

Because he'll never do this. I already know. And now I'm back because subcortically, I'm being yelled at. Don't trust him. That won't happen, right? Why am I being fatalistic? Because I'm being warned on what has happened. It has no interest. And I say it, these networks that are subcortical have no interest that we're working on something to improve it. Therefore, what is now causing us a big problem is that neither of us can forget as we're going forward, going forward triggers the past. The past is always present.

That's the problem. The past that we created. That adds a huge neurobiological layer of difficulty. Think of this. As numbers grow, it gets more difficult because of memory. Israel and Palestine, they cannot get out of this loop because there are generations upon generations of memory where everybody is getting their justice, right? I want my justice. And it's to blow up your family. And now you have a reason to get your justice. And there's no getting out of that, right? Because there's too many people with too much memory.

And there's too many people wanting to get their justice at the cost of somebody else. Well, partners do this too. I want my justice. And now I create a new one at you, right? You could put the kibosh on that, but it is hard because the very same problem is that I feel that something happened to me. There's that itch I need to scratch. I need you to pay. I need something to square this because there have been too many years of unfairness. And sometimes I just have to divorce you.

So this accruing of memory is central. And if people only knew, they could prevent this because it is human nature. It's not him or her. It's all of us. This is a problem. And if you don't know about it, you're going to do it. It feels like prevention is significantly better than an attempt at repair. Yes, because you cannot erase the memory. You can only relegate those neural pathways to a dirt road because they're no longer being used. They're no longer being triggered. Nothing you're doing right now triggers that memory.

But given that most people live lives of routine, you were concerned and a small amount of justification about why your partner was staying late at work with somebody that you felt uncomfortable about. You learned this lesson, and you even do some of the repair. You deal with all the difficulty of going back over it. You do an open and honest, completely frank apology. But the next time that your partner stays late at work, regardless of what's been done to the past, the present and your predictions about the future are now being colored by what happened before.

Not only is the past always present, but the present is changing the past as well. So you and I had a great wedding, but our marriage sucks. And 12 years, 13, 15, 20 years down the line, the therapist asks us, how was your wedding? And our report is not great. Contrast that with a couple who had the worst wedding from hell. People were arrested. Drugs were found. Gifts were looted. All sorts of things happened. This is a true story. But their marriage became a great marriage.

They look back on it as funny, as amazing. Their present state of mind changes our memory, which is why memory is completely unreliable, folks. If you're arguing about memory, you're engaged in something where you're both wrong. Which is why it's so much better to just apologize for however your partner sees it. Yeah. You don't lose anything. You gain. You keep your marriage. You keep your relationship intact. Does distance make this harder? Obviously, we're in a modern world with a lot of people who argue, but they're not together.

Maybe they fight over the phone or text message or email, whatever. What wrinkles does that add to the rupture and repair conversation? I love your questions, Chris. They're great. Here's the problem. We're face-to-face, eye-to-eye animals. We're legally blind on this side. We have to be dead on to regulate each other because we have a visual brain. Therefore, we error correct to the visual field. Everything else is messy. So, if we're on the phone, we lose the visual, which means we're only using the auditory. Now, since we're visual, we're visualizing things according to our own state of mind.

So, if I'm angry with you, what picture of you in my head do I have at the moment? Probably not great. That colors how you sound. So, my error rate in understanding and appraising you, especially if I'm under stress, all of this is about when we're under stress, which is a lot. We're only talking about when one of us is under stress, things are going to go wonky if we're not careful. Under stress, I'm going to hear differently because the state of mind that is triggered by this, by my feeling, by my stress, is connected to memory, and they operate in a loop.

They reinforce each other. My state of mind alters my perception like a funhouse mirror, and it's stunning. What I see, what I taste, what I hear, what I feel, all of that is altered by my state. Therefore, what could go wrong here? I am at an angry state. I am talking in a way, my prosody changes. That is unfriendly to you. I can't see your face. You can't see my face. Maybe I was smiling. You don't know. Now, we're going to fight for no reason because our error rate is sky high, and the more excited we get, the error rate goes really high, and it's over nothing.

Our brain thinks it's something. It isn't. Or text. It's crazy. Never do relationship stuff or text. You send a picture of your goofy face. I love you. Emoticons. What time's dinner? That's the limit. That's the upper bound of how much your relationship should be mediated. through the phone. Yes. What did we used to do? Well, I used to draw pictures on a cave, but in the old days, I'd write you a letter and it would take a month at least to get to you. You could be sure I wrote that thinking very carefully, very carefully about what I am saying.

It was a beautiful letter, right? Yeah, beautiful letter. I didn't need spellcheck. I had my anxiety knowing that you're going to see this letter and it was going to take about a month, right? I want you to get this exactly right. Well, what do we do now? We get in a lot of trouble with our text, with our work, you know, with, you know, add to that a little bit of Ambien or a little bit of benzodiazepines or alcohol and everything and we're screwed. So, yeah, we do not understand our limitations.

There are things we cannot do and yet we expect things that are not possible. Like you and I under stress can talk about more than one topic without fighting. That's impossible. Or that you and I can talk about an emotional conversation while one of us is driving. That will end badly. It's not possible. You know, there are things that people don't understand that we're limited by. We're smart in so many areas and we're so fucking stupid on a daily basis. And it's funny except we take all of it personally and most of it isn't.

Most of it is because we're stupid, automatic, reflexive, memory based, not thinking, not paying attention because we live in a world where our attention is constantly split now. In other news, if you're trying to go from Joey Chestnut to Joey Swole, the RP Strength app is the best place to start. I've been in the gym for 20 years and it wasn't until the past few years that I had the best training sessions of my life and RP was a massive part of that. Actual scientists built this thing around one obsession to beat up the high school bullies and provide the most science backed effective path to maximizing muscle gain.

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That's rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. I'm thinking about kind of how we discussed at the top this. It's like a conversation about compatibility. How much of relationship conflict is just based around incompatibility and not pointing in the same direction or being specific about what each of you wants to see if you're in agreement in advance? Compatibility in my game, in my mind, only is where you and I are pointing in two different directions on the big ticket items, right? I want full transparency.

I want us to, you know, this is a team sport, says I. I want us to work together. I want our left hands and right hands to know the same thing. That keeps us safe. That's what I want. Best thing and you say not so fast. I don't, would you have a right to say, I don't think that's the best idea for me. I don't think it's really good for you, but I'll try to convince you. I think we should have our secrets. I think we should have our privacy.

You have every right to want that. Now, if you stick to your guns and I can't get you over to my side, you can't get me over to your side. In an honest way, I have to really selfishly want what you want or it won't work and vice versa. We're not, we're incompatible. We're just, we're not wrong, which is incompatible. That's true incompatibility. Not you have a greater sex drive than I do. Not I like tennis and you don't. That's not the kind of compatibility that's going to make a difference in life.

All interests are going to change no matter what. That's not a problem. You can create mutual interest, but these things won't work. It's not about healthy, unhealthy, good, bad, right or wrong. It just can't work. It's a built-in fight. You can't ignore those things. The attachment system, the I-can't-quit-you biology will make us go, let's get married and ignore that deal breaker. You've said it a couple of times, the I-can't-quit-you biology. What is that? Attachment is nature's glue. It keeps us sticky. It keeps us together. It feels like love because it has loving aspects to it and behaviorally could have it.

But let's say you and I are, I'm abusive. I hurt you physically and mentally. That glue is likely to keep you in this relationship and you'll justify it in all sorts of ways. Or because you're financially dependent on them, you'll justify it. Or because your religion says this or because you're in a culture where divorce is down upon. Whatever it is, you'll come up with, or the kids, the kids will suffer that, right? I have all these reasons, but I'm telling you, the main reason is the attachment biology that is connected to survival, that feels like death.

I'm largely unaware of it. Some people are acutely aware, right? Depending on their attachment organization. But that isn't always their thing. For most people, there are outliers, but they're different. They're different. They don't attach in the same way. Everything in nature has a feature and a bug. Everything that's a feature is a bug. And also in personalities. Also, if somebody has massive OCD, that's a feature for a surgeon. You want your surgeon to have OCD. You want your pilot to have OCD, right? Your accountant to have OCD.

That's great. You don't want a spouse with OCD necessarily, because that's a pain in the ass. That's a bug there. So all of this isn't really good or bad. All people are disappointing. All people are a pain in the ass. All people are trouble and a burden. What you want is to create a system whereby neither of you can possibly feel unsafe or insecure by design. Neither of you will be unhappy in the relationship by design. You can do that. You can structure things this way.

You can't control everything else outside of this. But home, I think, is a relationship. Tracy and I, no matter where we go, as long as we're together, I'm fine. And we've been in some really terrible places. I mean, really terrible places. That's an achievement. That home is where we are. It's going to make me want to cry, because when you start to get to this place, the only thing now that's the bug is worrying that you can lose them. Not to affairs, not to divorce, but to death.

And that's really troubling. Although it does make me appreciate the moment instead of taking it for granted, which is what we should all do, because we're in denial about that. Your partner could die at any moment. Did you say what you needed to say? Have you really enjoyed that person? Are you really here? Or are you going to regret that? Again, nature is forces. Energy conservation is to do the least amount necessary and direct our attention to what we deem important, and it's usually something that is not familiar.

You are familiar. Therefore, I don't need to look at you anymore. I don't need to court you anymore. I don't need to know you anymore. I think I know you. I don't. We store a picture of our partners and our children's face in our brain for weeks and months without really looking. I didn't even notice this. That's how lazy we are. And it's not laziness. It's energy conservation. Therefore, we have to build rituals or we would never do anything good for ourselves. We would have to build things in that are romantic every day that we would do to fall in love again with each other every day.

It just doesn't happen. Behavior wags its tail of how we feel. And these are the forces we're up against. All of us. Automation. We're going to automate each other. Therefore, I think I know you. That's a dangerous proposition. I don't know you. I can never fully know you. And not only that, you've been on the planet too long, which is why we used to have pillow talk and shoot the breeze about our childhood. It's just fun talk. Now I sit with couples and they know nothing about each other.

They're not curious. There's no curiosity. Curiosity is the flame. Curiosity is the dopamine. Curiosity is the strangeness that goes, you know, you are novel, even though I think you're familiar. If I look really closely, you're not as familiar as I think. Now you're interesting, but we'd have to look for the novelty in the ordinary, and we're too lazy to do that. It's interesting with the I-can't-quit-you thing. I think a lot of people, you mentioned injustice and helplessness, and it's strange that... And fear. And fear will make us angry.

Yeah. With sufficiently disorganized attachment, you can fear and feel injustice and be helplessly stuck inside of a relationship with a person who is both supposedly the salve but also the cause of all of these issues, your psychological maladies. It's another feature and bug scenario it's a noble thing to sacrifice your needs in place of somebody that you're attached to, but that also can get hijacked to the point where you just continue to grit your teeth. As you mentioned, the couple that's been together for so long and they haven't enjoyed each other for decades and decades, and they just keep going because...

They can't stop. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of an addiction. Very... Well, yeah, there is an addictive component to it. I don't want to mislead your audience because it's not truly that. When I do something to feel better at the cost of doing the right thing, in other words, I feel better, but I just hurt the relationship, the union, I do get a reward for that, right? A feel-good, which makes me want to do it again and again. It is like addiction where I'm going to grab it for it because I can't hold and wait.

I can't wait, right? I'm going to take it now, even though there's downstream bad effects for me, I'm ignoring those. In that sense, yeah, that's very much like an addiction that is impulsive and needs to grab impulsively what I need to do despite the fact that it's self-harming. So, yes, but the system begins to react to itself. And that's really another way to look at it as systemic. The system is reacting no longer real individuals. They're amplifying each other's negatives by pointing and poking their core vulnerabilities.

Here's another unfair, kind of unkind nature thing, is that because we pair bond based on some kind of familiarity and recognition, we don't pair bond with strangers that are too strange, right? They have to be familiar enough. We're both likely to have the bite that fits the other person's wound. We're not those people, but we kind of play them on TV. We have the predilection, we have the ability to do those things that remind us of those relationships, which is why it's problematic. It's a memory.

Now, if we didn't know better, I don't know you have this wound. I only see your defense against it, and your defense is really threatening. So, I respond in a threatening way, which consolidates your vulnerability and increases your defense and makes you certain that I'm a dangerous character. Well, you're doing the same with me. You happen to be poking me in a core vulnerable place, and I can't do anything other than react. You don't know this because the way I'm responding to you feels threatening, of course.

Therefore, you are going to protect yourself from me, and therein lies the problem. We're going to make each other worse naturally because you're not paid to sit there and just think about what I'm doing. You're going to take it personally. Now, if you're a therapist, you can't do that, right? I have to sit, and I have to sit with my feelings and not jump up and act out. I have, but I regret that. But we're human, but we're paid to do otherwise, right? Your partner isn't.

And therefore, we're more likely to make each other worse because it's a misunderstanding. You can't know why I'm doing this threatening thing, and you don't need to know because you're feeling threatened. So, knowledge is power, understanding how the brain works, understanding how these systems work, understanding your partner inside out, being an expert on your partner, which if your survival mattered to you and you thought about it, you better know how to restore your partner back to level thinking and level performance. because your life does depend on them.

They go down, you're in the foxhole together, you're dead. So you better know the animal you picked and how to work with this animal, be an animal whisperer, this one. They're not you, and you're gonna need them if you are a team. It matters if they go down, and you better know how, just the right way to pick them back up, or you're, again, what's the point? So this is an orientation, and couples just not oriented towards this being a survival team, but it is. You just haven't been tested yet, right?

It's not thrown you that curve. You're not in Bosnia during that time. You're not in Ukraine and Russia now. You're not in Gaza, or, you know, right? A whole different orientation there. They know what's important. To protect each other, right? We don't, we're asleep. That's the denial system, because it would get in the way if we always had to plan for this. But the planning for this starts with the building blocks of reining each other in and being safe and secure, and predicting and planning and preventing future problems by predicting them ahead of time.

That does the same thing. You don't have to build, you know, together a bomb shelter. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that the two of you know how to build structure, how to reform this to your liking. You just have to know how to do it and practice it, and it has to be predicated on principles that cannot be violated. Jared, have you ever considered you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co.

last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man, I kept chugging, waiting for the regret to creep in. Never happened. Didn't you end up going home with that chick with the lazy eye? The eye didn't seem lazy to me. See, most people, like Jared, don't actually want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best NA brews on the planet, so you can still have something cold and tasty, just without the usual trade-off.

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It's the thing that is the most important. It's gonna help us steel ourselves against the woes of the world and the slings and arrows that are going to come from outside of it. What are the things that people should focus on in order to do that? On a more focused level, I'm gonna give you two, see? On a focused level, start now. If you do nothing else, make sure that you repair to the other person's satisfaction. You can see their face, relax. If they're not relaxed, you're not done yet.

Repair, fix, make it right, make amends, properly, immediately, or within 30 minutes. Make that a habit, make that a law, make that what must happen. Otherwise, you're gonna die sooner, I guarantee you, because of the corticosteroids you produce in that stress when there's a breach. You're not doing yourself any favors. And you're setting the other person up for, and yourself, for a long-term memory. And that's, you're not gonna want that. So fix it right away. I don't care how you do that. If you can do nothing else, you can say to each other, you know, I hate you right now, but we're okay.

It turns out that the we're okay is sufficient to be able to sleep through the night, or be able to get through your day. Because I promise you, if you don't do that, you are not at your optimum performance level. You can't be, you won't be, if you're paying attention. So you know what's good for yourself. Just settle the existential question that is there when there's a breach in relationship, when we fight. Will this relationship exist tomorrow? Are we okay? If you can just do that, minimum, you're better than most.

And my wife and I have a rule. We can go to bed angry, but we have to at least touch toes. And that's harder than you might think. But that's been practiced. And there's an immediate reward for doing the right thing when it's the hardest thing to do. And that is your self-esteem goes right up. Because you know you did the hardest thing, the right thing when it was the hardest thing to do. We're already doing the easiest things. That's what we're already doing, but that's not a good life.

A purpose-centered life is decided ahead of time that this is right, best, or good, so say yes, both. And we're gonna plan to do this for when we actually do not feel like doing it at all. Even when I hate you, I still do this beautiful thing. Even when I hate you, I still don't do this destructive thing, right? That's a good life. That's the only thing that's ever been a good life. That is reliable, that earns love, that earns respect as daily we're proving to each other.

We stick to our principles. We show each other and when we fail, we fall on our swords, beg for forgiveness and make it right, simple. And the other thing is design your relationship. Start with who are you? Shared power, shared authority, something other than that. You've gotta be explicit and you gotta think ahead. Yeah, I'd like you to be in charge, I like it, right? Okay, remember that if he's in charge, you don't get the final say on anything. You understand that, right? Unless you build that in somehow, right?

And so you just have to be adult and a grownup because your individual lives are now your own, not your parents and as a couple, you're on your own. You're the leaders here, there is nobody else. No therapist, right? I'm not gonna define your relationship. You have to, it's your gig. You can have it any way you want and believe me, people have some very strange and novel arrangements, right? Fine, they're great because they fully agree, they've worked it out, no problem. But it's all explicit, it's never implied, right?

Because if it's implied, I'm gonna abuse that reality, right? It has to be explicit and agreed upon like a blood oath because this really is about, our lives depend on adhering to this. We have to drink the Kool-Aid and buy into it because we're expected to come through when we least want to and that's gonna happen for sure. Awesome, Stan Tatkin, ladies and gentlemen. Stan, I think you're brilliant, I think your work rules. Where should people go to check out everything you do? All right, the PACT Institute is a place to go to thepactinstitute.com.

If you're a couple, there's a couple area that is devoted to you, workshops and retreats, materials. And then if you're a clinician, that's how this started. We do trainings all over the world and you can find that information there as well. Oh, and there's a new product called the Win-Win Couple. The first time we've done a filming on how to work together collaboratively under stress. And that video is now available on the website to go to the PACT site. Heck yeah, Stan, I appreciate you. Until next time.

Chris, you're terrific. I wish every interviewer is like you. That's what I wanted to hear. All right, thank you.