(highlight:: The Four Strongest Indicators of a Doomed Relationship
Key takeaways:
• Criticism is one of the main predictors of relationship demise.
• Contempt destroys the immune system.
• Stonewalling is the fourth horseman of the apocalypse.
Transcript:
Speaker 3
Are there some negative things that are more predictive than others? And we came up with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And Julie can explain what that is. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2
So these are the great big predictors that can predict with over 90% accuracy, six years down the road, where are you going to be? You're going to be together happily with your partner, unhappily, or will you already be separated and divorced? So the first one is criticism, and all of us are familiar with that one. There's no such thing as constructive criticism, none.
Speaker 4
So when your body makes try, yeah, when your boss tries to critically tell you feedback, that's not a good thing. So what criticism means is blaming a problem between you on a character flaw of your partner.
Speaker 2
So some examples of that are you're so lazy, you wouldn't think of cleaning up the kitchen.
Speaker 4
Why are you so irresponsible? You're always postponing how long it takes to pay the bills? What's happening with you? What's wrong with you? It's one of the great criticisms. How are you supposed to answer that? It's saying you in general are wrong.
Speaker 2
So those are criticisms and they hurt. And the natural response to that is the second horseman called defensiveness. And defensiveness we're familiar with too. There's two types. One is whining like, I did two pay the bills on time or counter attack. Oh yeah? Well, when was the last time you took the car in full repair?
Speaker 4
It's a counter attack. So that's defensiveness. We have criticism, defensiveness.
Speaker 2
The third is really the sulfuric acid for a relationship. It's called contempt. And what we mean by contempt is it's criticism too, but from a place of moral superiority. So it includes some scorn, some disgust. It's often expressed through sarcasm like, oh yeah, I'm sure you picked up the tickets. Ha. You know, contempt is also name calling all those horrible names when we get very angry that we'll call somebody. Could be mockery also. Oh, you're so scared. You know, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4
So contempt is horrible. And it not only is the strongest predictor of relationship demise, contempt also destroys the immune system of the listener.
Speaker 2
We discovered that in 15 minutes of conflict, the number of times a listener heard something contemptuous predicted how many infectious illnesses they would have in the coming years.
Speaker 4
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2
So the immune system suppresses of course, or fights off viruses, colds, blues, tumors, right. And the people who experienced more contempt got sicker over time. So that was scary. Finally, the fourth horseman is what we call stonewalling. And stonewalling is when one partner completely shuts down, absolutely gives no response to the person, pretends they're not even there. We'll sit there, but not give any not of the head, anything verbal. And that's related to another finding of ours about physiological flooding, which John can explain. But that, what we call stonewalling, turning into a stonewall in the middle of a conversation, is our fourth horseman.)
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(highlight:: Emotions v.s. Logic During Conflict
Key takeaways:
• Emotions are important, and we need to listen to them in order to understand our partners.
• We can be both emotional and rational at the same time.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
How do you guys kind of navigate the whole logic versus emotions territory? I guess in particular, when it comes to regrettable incidents, arguments, fights, whatever we want to call it.
Speaker 5
Yeah, you know, the logic versus emotion kind of thing is, is a false debate because you can be very logical and still be emotional. And in fact, we need our emotions to problem solve creatively. We need to know what we feel. So we have to we have to get in touch with our intuitions. So just because we're emotional doesn't mean we can't be logical as well at the same time.
Speaker 3
So that's a false dichotomy between emotional and rational. So we can be very rational and still be emotional. It's very important that we listen to the emotional part of what our partners' perceptions are and how they make our partner feel.
Speaker 5
Because if we don't listen to the emotions, then they won't feel understood.)
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(highlight:: Women Need to Feel Emotionally Close in Order to Be Sexually Open
Key takeaways:
• The biggest difference between men and women is in their sexual behavior. Men typically need emotional closeness in order to be open sexually, while women typically do not need this type of closeness in order to be open sexually.
• The history of women has been filled with experiences of rape, sexual abuse, and hurt through sex, which has led to a deepseated fear for women. This fear can prevent women from being emotionally open with men, which can lead to difficulties in sexual intimacy.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Biggest most important differences between men and women in heterosexual relationships it's about sex the biggest difference is that women need emotional closeness in order to Be open sexually men typically don't they may use sex as a way to feel emotionally close then let me explain that as one can imagine women have a history of thousands of years of being raped Sexually abused hurt through sex and we feel it in our bones even if we haven't experienced it ourselves we don't feel safe in the world we do not you can take a room of people give them an
Speaker 4
Example of you're walking into a underground garage how many of you feel afraid almost all the women will raise their hands almost none of the men will I mean it's just wow it's really A huge discrepancy so when a woman is being most vulnerable which is typically during sexual intimacy she really needs to feel safe particularly if she's had any kind of sexual abuse
Speaker 2
In her background and we know that at the minimum one out of four women by the age of 18 has experienced sexual abuse or molestation and it's those are the only ones who reported it's probably A higher percentage than that so women need to feel emotionally close in order to be sexually open and men we need as women we need to understand that for men a lot of times you know men may Feel like oh it's too childlike to just ask for a cuddle ask for a hug so we'll be manly and we'll go for sex which gives us you know all the touch and all the hugging and you know all that contact That we need)
- Time 0:40:26
- intimacy, sex, emotional intimacy, emotional closeness,

(highlight:: Conversations to have before having Kids
Key takeaways:
• There is never a right time to have kids.
• You should prepare yourself by talking about important questions before you have kids.
• It is important to have a support system lined up for when your kids start to grow and change.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
There's never a right time to have kids you know i mean in the sense that uh there's always something going on in your life right uh you're doing work and you're doing a career or you know You want to go do an adventure or you want to go travel you know whatever so you decide to have kids when you know really really want kids and you prepare yourself by talking a lot about um
Speaker 4
Really important questions for example how should we discipline our kid do we use corporal punishment or not that's a big one or should we raise our kid uh within a particular religious Institution or not um if our kid wants to change genders or be transsexual will we support that or not as our kid gets older um how about who's going to take the sleep shift who's going to Do nights um which is really important how will we handle nights how will we handle nights right um and uh lining up a support system is really a good idea)
- Time 1:21:10
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