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

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You're great. Your work is fantastic. You rule.

Thank you. Thank you.

If I were to summarize your worldview on relationships—stepping into your skin for a second—I'd call it "love by design, not desire." Thought, not felt. How close am I with that design-versus-desire framing?

I'd prefer to call it earned love—earned on a daily basis by knowing how to work with the brain, the neuroendocrine system, which we can talk about. It means designing the relationship to protect feelings, to enhance them, and to allow two different people under stress to maintain a collaborative and cooperative attitude. That's a hard thing to get, because it takes predicting, planning, and preparing. What could go wrong between human beings?

Why are romantic attachment relationships neurochemically so hard to navigate?

They're hard because, in the attachment world, if you understand or buy the idea of a primary attachment relationship: a primary attachment relationship tends to be dyadic with human primates. We pair bond in herds. And the romantic adult primary attachment relationship is most like the earliest one, which is predicated on survival. The attachment system is an existential glue that holds us together — it's the "I can't quit you" biology, and we confuse it for love.

Because it goes back to that earliest survival relationship, that's why breaking up is also hard to do. That's why it has a very long memory: it reminds us of that earliest dependency relationship, whereas other relationships tend not to do that.

So we're reliving our childhoods in a way?

We're reliving our relationships — how we felt with all these important originals — in the relationship we call a romantic adult relationship. But it is age 12 and before. That's generally how I think of it: we have the parents in our heads that we had around 12 and before, even if our parents have since changed a great deal for the better or for the worse. We still draw upon that earliest experience, because that's the root of our experience through thousands upon thousands of interactions starting from infancy. 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 from mine. Even if I described my definition of love in action, my expectations of love may differ from what I say. So there's already a problem. If you're basing your life on emotion, which is like a roller coaster, then your life is like a roller coaster.

Start with a shared purpose, not feelings

The smartest and wisest approach—the way it has always worked in long-term relationships between adults of equal power—is that you first need a shared purpose, a reason for being in the relationship that isn't based on feelings. And a vision: where are we headed? What's the end point? Are we ride or die, all the way to wiping each other's butts in old age? Where are we headed, and why? What's the point of us? Who or what do we serve?

Only a purpose that isn't based on a selfish reason will carry the day, because we're too unreliable as a species. Humans are historically moody, fickle, impulsive, unpredictable, sometimes opportunistic, warlike, xenophobic, and easily influenced by groups and other people. We're not great over the long run in unions.

So we have to account for going through time together, which means going through changes. We need an invention, a design from the ground up—a made-up thing, because all relationships are made up—that would sustain us in the long run and allow for all the wiggle room necessary as we change through time. Otherwise, we're not going to make it.

Understand the forces that push us around

That's issue one. Issue two is understanding 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 due to its memory—most like that earliest one, based on survival—it has a long memory, and we tend to be proxies for everybody who came before. It's a very projective system. The chances of accruing threat memory by getting things wrong based on memory and appraisal are 100%.

So if we're not really good at knowing how to minimize threat and stay collaborative under most stress and pressure, we'll 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 we're not relying on the ebbs and flows of how we feel.

Plan on your devils, not your angels

Like any other professional union, we plan on our devils, not our angels. Couples plan on their angels, and that's a big mistake. Devils we are, if the opportunity arises—if we're under enough load, enough pain, pressure, or stress. Again, emotions: if I'm going to behave according to how I feel, which is pretty much everybody on the planet, it stands to reason we'll have a hard time getting along.

This is about predicting what could go wrong and planning for it ahead of time, instead of just falling into it, which is what couples always do. Couples don't predict, plan, and prepare for what could go wrong based on what has gone wrong. Nobody else does that. In medicine, we do post-mortems—let's not kill the patient again. We predict what could go wrong in the police force, the military, medicine, science, business. Couples don't do that; they just walk into the same situations unprepared, and they just repeat, repeat.

We would never get involved with a group of people without knowing what the culture was and how we'd be protected from each other, because we're animals. Couples have no governance, no way of protecting each other from each other, because they don't set it up.

The missing social contract

Couples are the only voluntary system of free individuals coming together of equal power and authority—at least on the face of it. It should be based on terms and conditions that prevent all of this. That's why they're predicted not to last very long, or if they do, one or both people won't be happy or won't feel safe and secure. There's no social contract, no system of making agreements based on purpose—on what is best, what is right, for the both of us. Without that, it's going to be the wild west.

The interviewer asks: does that mean discussing non-negotiables and practical things in advance, and as early as possible, is actually the romantic thing to do?

The speaker answers that you probably wouldn't raise it over a nice romantic dinner — "hey honey, let's talk about any deal breakers" — though you could, since it serves both purposes. Deal breakers should be known ahead of time: "I want a baby, I have to have a baby" against "you hate kids, and let's get married" is what people actually do, and it isn't smart because it can't work. The same goes for "I want monogamy and you want polyamory" — neither person is wrong, and both have a right to want and get what they want, but they can't do business together because it will cause a lot of trouble. Deal breakers are the big-ticket items that can't work because the two people are pointing in different directions.

Shared purpose beyond deal breakers

The interviewer suggests that a specific shared purpose and vision must still matter outside of deal breakers.

Looking at the human condition and how people have sustained groups, groups don't stay together long or get along well without a shared purpose for being together. If you and I want to start a band, that's our purpose — our goal and vision is to get a record deal, at least initially. Without that, we'd have little reason to spend time together and would probably not get along, because people pick at each other when they lack a shared purpose. Otherwise we tend to otherize and pick at each other's differences, rather than naturally looking to where we agree and are the same.

Consensus makers have to deliberately do that, but the average person, through energy conservation — biologically, all living things are meant to do the least amount necessary — is lazy and won't do things they should do because they don't think they have to. So ideas like "we're in it to win it," "we're a survival team," wanting to make money, succeed, and survive are essential for keeping people on the path together and not fixating on their differences. Otherwise, we fight. When that happens in a country like ours, we see civil war, tribalization, or massive splintering, because there's no longer a believable centralized sense of purpose and vision — the American dream — holding us together.

If that is true of all systems large and small, it follows that a couple is no different: without a shared reason for being together at any given time, they will fight or drift apart. That shared purpose is what actually holds people together.

What's the importance of agreements? They're all we have to keep us from being harmful to each other. All we have is our pacts, our agreements, our social contracts. Civilizations are predicated on social contracts. Even the first laws of religion were a social contract — with God, an Old Testament God who would rain on your bedroom for 40 days and 40 nights if you disobeyed. That was a powerful thing to get people to start behaving, and the Ten Commandments were the first way of getting people to stop harming each other.

Everything is predicated on agreements. Otherwise, we go to war and do harm. As 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, laws, principles, and rules keep us from doing that and allow us to stay together in safety and harmony. Otherwise, we wouldn't. It's no different with a couple, so they have to come up with these agreements as well.

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Why do we make the fundamental agreement to prioritise each other above everything else at all times?

You don't have to. You could agree that ourselves come first. But then you'd have to describe that to each other and define what it really means — the same as with a relationship. What does it mean in practical terms? If this happens, what would we do? If that happens, what would we do? Are there any exceptions? What could go wrong with putting ourselves first? What happens if this relationship crashes and burns? If we put ourselves first, what does that do for our kids, for our own health? So does it make sense?

Maybe we put religion first. That's fine, but you'd have to think it through, because you're planning your life — 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 all predicated on what the highest priority is. Otherwise, you're not a team. It'll be chaos when load-bearing moments hit, and you'll be unprepared.

It's all practical, 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. But it has to be defined, and done judiciously, because it's no small thing — your happiness, safety and security are all predicated on your design.

What is the threat response based on memory? Memory is a problem. We're memory animals—everything we do runs on memory. Most of our day is automatic, driven by memory rather than the energy-expanding, critical-thinking areas of the brain. We save those for novelty, for work, for other things. The rest of the day we walk through reflexively, based on memory.

Because of our survival instinct, negative experiences are favored in memory—we have to remember where we were hurt, because of danger. Survival sits at the top of our subcortical drive, and it does not equivocate or differentiate. If you hurt me, didn't fix it right away, and do it again, I'll predict you'll do it again and again—which you will feel attacked by. But that's me protecting myself, using pattern recognition to sweep the environment for cues. Every time a threatening pattern repeats, the array of threat cues I'm scanning for grows.

It makes sense naturally: this system doesn't know the difference between you holding a gun on me and you looking askance at me in a way I read as judgment, attack, or criticism. Left unchecked, this becomes problematic and snowballs.

It sounds like it sensitizes your system over time. — Yes, it has to, because we have to survive. This part of the brain is lightning fast: I see it, I shoot it. That's sensible when your life depends on a quick decision and protective action—but it's a problem in relationships. I'll react very quickly based on my own narrative history and memory, I'll likely be wrong, and you'll likely feel threatened by my assumption. You'll then protect yourself and behave threateningly in return. Therein lies the problem with the human condition: why we're better at war than at relationships over the long run.

Quick repair keeps harm out of long-term memory

There are ways to remedy this if you know what you're up against. One is quick repair—a way to keep memory from going into long-term memory, where it becomes the gift that keeps on giving. Sadly, most people don't fix things quickly, or at all: they delay, skip it, or apologize in the wrong way. And so the beat goes on. This is why families lose their kids to estrangement, why people get sued, why people once challenged each other to duels to the death. We remember harm done; we don't forget it. The person who harmed us does.

The adrenaline created when we feel misunderstood, hurt, judged, or that something is unfair or unjust provides a lot of juice to push the memory into long-term storage—unless you fix it right away, in which case it doesn't.

That's one of the main reasons to grow up and use what we invented. We invented apologies and amends to hold on to our relationships. If you want to hold on to your relationship with your kid, spouse, or parents, you have to learn to fall on your sword and apologize without equivocation, qualification, or explanation—no qualifiers at all, if you know what's good for you. In the real world, that's the only thing that will relax another person. The only thing. And you have to apologize for what they think you did, not what you think you did.

Think how hard that is, because we're so prideful. We think we're always right—which isn't true; we're hardly ever right by much. It's arrogance, hubris, to assume our communication was spot-on, that we heard clearly, that our memory is great and our perception correct while the other person's isn't. None of that can be proved, and none of it is true at any given time. And yet we'll die on that hill—unless we're dumb.

Intense negative experiences that are repaired quickly have a completely different future ahead of them than ones left to fester. If a relationship has regular ruptures without repair—especially without quick repair—it's painful in the moment, more painful in the future, and it sensitizes your system to detecting it happening again, even when it isn't. That means your worldview will appear increasingly deranged to the other person, who is now expected to apologize based on your interpretation rather than their own projection. It's vicious—a really badly designed system.

Well, it's not designed. Remember, we used to die at 15 or 30 tops. We didn't live that long. We would pair bond for four years, then leave and mix up the gene pool, and that satisfied the ways of natural law. Nature didn't plan on us doing what we do today. We're on our own.

That's why we have to invent our own meaning. We're not born into a world with meaning—clearly. We're not born into a world where we understand why we're here, how we got here, or where we're going. That's the whole existential dilemma: the angst. We're going to die, we're alone, we don't know why we're here, and life has no meaning. That's very depressing, so we create meaning.

But meaning also involves governance. How are we going to protect each other from each other? That isn't provided by nature. We are predators—apex predators, in fact. We're nice when we're happy, but you may not want to be around us when we're unhappy. We're kind of nasty—unless there are norms. With my 14-year-old daughter, I'll say: you can be angry, but you cannot walk around destroying the atmosphere for everybody in the house. That's a community issue. Stop it. Only that stops that kind of behavior: no, you can't do this. I know you want to, but I'll show you that you can't. Try—and I will show you. That gives rise to the idea that there are limits, boundaries, things you can and cannot do.

But suppose I don't do that. Suppose I give in—then you can get away with anything, because there is no God. I did that. It doesn't happen naturally. Think of Lord of the Flies: we're animals, and the human primate product line isn't great.

Civilization—built over so many years of increasing social and emotional complexity, ideals, values, morals, and principles—took a long time to get here, and we're still a mess. So don't be naive. You are responsible for this relationship; no one else is. You're the only ones who will benefit, and also the ones who will suffer if you're not an alliance. If you're not working together as a two-person system of "we" and "us," interdependently, with the same things to gain and lose—are you really going to survive this life? With all the slings and arrows, the things that happen, and the indifference of others? Just test that out: when the chips are down, people will be indifferent to your concerns. That's just the way it is. Not knowing that and not preparing is simply not being aware, not being an adult, not being in reality.

The interviewer noted that if painful memories are left to encode in long-term memory for too long, you can end up seeing your partner more as a predator than a lover. The guest agreed: the subcortical brain does not differentiate.

Neurochemically, the salience network is what directs attention to what's most important in the moment — it's why you hear a sound and look. Other networks involved here are fear- and threat-related. 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. You may not intend to do that, but your intentions aren't what matter here. I'm picking up a threat 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, I assume everything I'm picking up is correct and I don't check. I just shoot first, assuming you're doing that thing right now. That's because these areas don't have executive function — they're not meant to. Executive function takes time and resources.

When we're relaxed, we have all oars in the water: we can think, error-correct, and think in a relativistic way rather than a dominant, absolutist way — "I am certain" becomes "maybe you're right." But as soon as blood pressure and heart rate reach a certain level, my brain changes. I literally lose the capacity to do that, because the executive areas demand a lot of resources to run — oxygen, glucose, and blood — and those resources are now going to my striated muscles as I enter fight or flight. I'm hyper-aroused, my brain is altered, and I no longer care about your interests.

It takes very little — this is Robert Sapolsky's work — very few glucocorticoids coursing through my veins for me to stop giving a damn about you. And you lose me as an audience if you're not careful. You don't even notice you've lost me. I feel unsafe, therefore talk to the hand: I care only about my interests and you get nothing. That's how sensitive the system is, because I've determined on a subcortical level that I'm not safe. I may not know this myself, but you will if you pay attention — and I will know when you fall out of safety, because I'm watching you.

We're psychobiologically wired, in close proximity, to pick up social-emotional cues from the other person faster than from our own bodies. That primes us for something called interactive regulation, or coregulation — another kind of teamwork, but a more autonomic one. This is a very stupid part of us, but we'll thank it because it dodged a bullet for our ancestors.

I have to understand that you and I have to talk to each other in a particular way, otherwise you'll confuse me for an adversary. That's 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 — which will compel you to then take care of only yourself. Now we're one-person systems, no longer in a team sport but a solo sport.

Asked whether this applies to everyone, the guest was emphatic: there are no exceptions. They're all people.

The interviewer asks whether this explains how resentment accumulates in relationships, until they start to look 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 is too unfair, too unjust, and too insensitive can't last because it's unfair—unless it's an asymmetric relationship like an employer, where I have to suck it up because I want the job and need the money. But in an equal, voluntary system, 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: 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 it's an autocracy and I'm the dictator, in which case I still better keep my eyes open at night. 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 so or not, and that's universal.

You can't erase the past—only change the future

Asked how much you can prune bad memories and how much harder it gets to get over them once they've accumulated, the answer is: you can't get rid of these memories, and you don't want to—that loss will come soon enough anyway. "I'm 72 and it's starting to happen with names." The only way to change the past is to change the future. There's no other way. These neuropathways are weighted by repeats, and repeating things is the worst.

The smart thing, which we already know and couples don't do, has two parts. First, I will apologize forever for harm done—that is the right and just thing to do. In the real world that's 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 never works. Same in couples: I'll always apologize for what you feel I did, no problem—but then 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'd be learning from the past and creating a different future based on what we learned. Not "you," not just me—either of us, because we're human and we could both do this. We found a place where we're vulnerable; let's close that up as we go. But couples don't do that. They walk right into the same thing again, rinse and repeat, and that is deadly.

You do not want repetition. It creates inflammation, and once it starts, it accrues. Sadly, I deal with couples who have been together sometimes 12 years, often three to 30, and they're burdened not only by looking back at all the resentments but by feeling compelled to litigate the past—rehearsing the same thing over and over, with nothing coming of it. Besides, memory sucks, and they're going to fight about memory. And when they do try to work on the relationship, memory intrudes on the present and puts the kibosh on the future. That's the big problem we're trying to solve.

How old fights sabotage repair

Suppose you and I have been fighting for years, both complaining of unfairness, and now neither of us trusts the other because of it—years of doing business poorly. Now we want to right things, so we go to someone proposing to design the relationship from the ground up. As we're doing this, one of us is going to say, "That's not going to work. Why am I depressed? Because he'll never do this—I already know." And now I'm back there, because subcortically I'm being yelled at: don't trust him, that won't happen.

Why am I being fatalistic? Because I'm being warned by what has happened. These subcortical networks have no interest in the fact that we're working on something to improve it.

What's now causing a big problem is that neither of us can forget as we go forward. Going forward triggers the past; the past is always present — a past we created. That adds a huge neurobiological layer of difficulty.

Think of how this scales: as numbers grow, it gets more difficult because of memory. Israel and Palestine cannot get out of this loop because there are generations upon generations of memory. Everybody is getting their justice — I want my justice, and it's to blow up your family, and now you have a reason to get your justice. There's no getting out of that, because there are too many people with too much memory, too many people wanting their justice at the cost of somebody else.

Partners do this too: I want my justice, and now I create a new grievance at you. You could put the kibosh on that, but it's hard, because the very same problem is that I feel 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.

This accruing of memory is central, and if people only knew, they could prevent it — because it is human nature. It's not him or her; it's all of us. 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 neuro pathways to a dirt road, because they're no longer being used, no longer being triggered. Nothing you're doing right now triggers that memory."

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

Not only is the past always present, but the present is changing the past as well. Say you and I had a great wedding, but our marriage sucks — and 12, 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 wedding from hell — people were arrested, drugs were found, all the gifts were looted, all sorts of things happened; this is a true story — but their marriage became a great one, and they look back on it as funny, as amazing.

The 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 rupture and repair harder? Many couples argue while apart—over the phone, by text, or email. What wrinkles does that add?

Here's the problem: we're face-to-face, eye-to-eye animals. We have to be dead-on to regulate each other, because we have a visual brain and we error-correct through the visual field. Everything else is messy. On the phone, we lose the visual and rely only on the auditory. Since we're visual, we visualize things according to our own state of mind—if I'm angry with you, the picture of you in my head is probably not great, and that colors how you sound. My error rate in understanding and appraising you goes up, especially under stress—which is the whole context here, since we're only talking about what happens when one of us is stressed.

Under stress, I hear differently. The state of mind triggered by my feelings is connected to memory, and they operate in a loop, reinforcing each other. My state of mind alters my perception like a funhouse mirror—what I see, taste, hear, and feel is all altered by my state.

So what could go wrong? I'm angry, my prosody changes in a way that's unfriendly to you, and neither of us can see the other's face—maybe I was smiling, but you don't know. Now we fight for no reason, because our error rate is sky high, and the more excited we get, the worse it gets. It's over nothing; our brain thinks it's something, but it isn't.

And text is crazy. Never do relationship stuff over text. Send a picture of your goofy face, "I love you," emoticons, "what time's dinner?"—that's it, nothing more.

That's the upper bound of how much a relationship should be mediated through the phone.

What did we used to do? In the old days, I'd write you a letter that took at least a month to arrive. You could be sure I wrote it thinking very carefully about what I was saying—a beautiful letter, no spell check needed. My anxiety, knowing you'd read it and that it would take a month, made me want to get it exactly right. Now, we get into trouble with our texts, and add a little Ambien, benzodiazepines, or alcohol, and we're screwed.

We don't understand our limitations. There are things we cannot do, yet we expect the impossible—like two people under stress discussing more than one topic without fighting, or having an emotional conversation while one of us is driving. That will end badly; it's not possible. We're smart in so many areas and so stupid on a daily basis. And it's funny, except we take all of it personally, when most of it isn't personal. Most of it is because we're automatic, reflexive, memory-based, not thinking, not paying attention—because we now live in a world where our attention is constantly split.

The host raises the question of how much relationship conflict is really just incompatibility — not pointing in the same direction, or failing to clarify in advance what each person wants.

For the guest, true incompatibility only exists when two people point in different directions on the big-ticket items. He gives an example: he wants full transparency — a relationship as a team sport, where both partners' left and right hands know the same thing, because that keeps them safe. The partner has every right to disagree: "I don't think that's the best idea for me... I think we should have our secrets. I think we should have our privacy."

If neither can honestly bring the other over to their side — and the persuasion has to be genuine, not something one person merely tolerates — then the couple is simply incompatible. "We're not wrong, we're just incompatible."

That is true incompatibility. It is not a difference in sex drive, or one person liking tennis and the other not. Those differences don't determine a relationship's fate, because all interests change over time anyway, and you can create mutual interests. The big-ticket disagreements are different: it's not about healthy or unhealthy, good or bad, right or wrong — it just can't work. It's a built-in fight, and you can't ignore those things. Yet the attachment system — the "I can't quit you" biology — will push people to get married and ignore the deal breaker anyway.

When asked what he means by the "I can't quit you biology," the speaker explains that attachment is nature's glue—it keeps us sticky, keeps us together. It feels like love because it has loving aspects to it, both emotionally and behaviorally.

But that glue can work against us. If a partner is abusive, hurting you physically and mentally, the attachment is likely to keep you in the relationship, and you'll justify it in all sorts of ways: financial dependence, religion, a culture where divorce is looked down upon, or concern for the kids. You come up with all these reasons, but the main reason is the attachment biology. It's connected to survival and feels like death to leave. Most people are largely unaware of it, though some are acutely aware depending on their attachment organization. There are outliers who don't attach in the same way—they're simply different.

Everything in nature has a feature and a bug—everything that's a feature is also a bug. The same goes for personality traits: massive OCD is a feature in a surgeon, a pilot, or an accountant, but in a spouse it's a pain in the ass. So none of this is really good or bad. All people are disappointing, all people are trouble and a burden.

What you want is to create a system whereby, by design, neither of you can possibly feel unsafe or insecure, and neither of you will be unhappy in the relationship. You can structure things that way. You can't control everything outside of it, but home, as a relationship, can travel with you. He and his wife Tracy, no matter where they go—as long as they're together, he's fine, even in some really terrible places. That's an achievement: home is where we are.

Getting to that place moves him almost to tears, because the only remaining bug is the worry that you could lose your partner—not to affairs or divorce, but to death. That's really troubling, though it also makes him appreciate the moment instead of taking it for granted—which is what we should all do, because we're in denial about it. 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 will you regret it?

Nature's forces work against this. Energy conservation means doing the least amount necessary and directing attention only to what we deem important—usually what's unfamiliar. You are familiar, therefore I don't need to look at you anymore, don't need to court you. I think I know you; I don't. We store a picture of our partner's or child's face in our brain for weeks and months without really looking. That's how lazy we are—and it's not laziness, it's energy conservation.

That's why we have to build rituals; otherwise we'd never do anything good for ourselves. We'd have to build in something romantic every day, something that would make us fall in love with each other again every day. It just doesn't happen on its own. Behavior lags way behind how we feel, and these are the forces we're all up against: automation. We automate each other, and therefore "I think I know you"—which is a dangerous proposition. I don't know you. I can never fully know you. And besides, you've been on the planet too long.

That's why we used to have pillow talk, shooting the breeze about our childhood—just fun talk. Now he sees couples who know nothing about each other. They're not curious. Curiosity is the flame, curiosity is the dopamine, curiosity is the strangeness that says: you're 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. You mentioned injustice and helplessness—and fear, and fear makes us angry. With sufficiently disorganized attachment, you can fear, feel injustice, and be helplessly stuck inside a relationship with a person who is both supposedly the self but also the cause of all of these psychological maladies. It's another feature-and-bug scenario: it's a noble thing to sacrifice your needs in place of somebody you're attached to, but that can also get hijacked to the point where you just keep gritting your teeth—as you mentioned, a couple that's been together so long and hasn't enjoyed each other for decades, and they just keep going because they can't stop.

Yeah, it's the same addiction. Well, there is an addictive component to it, but 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. I feel good, which makes me want to do it again and again. It is like addiction in that I'm going to grab for it because I can't hold and wait. I'm going to take it now even though there are downstream bad effects for me, and I'm ignoring those. So in that sense, yes, it's very much like an addiction that is impulsive and needs to grab impulsively what it needs, despite the fact that it's self-harming.

But the system begins to react to itself, and that's really another way to look at it—as systemic. The system is reacting; these are no longer real individuals. They're amplifying each other's negatives by pointing and poking at their core vulnerabilities.

Here's another unfair, unkind thing nature does: because we pair bond based on some kind of familiarity and recognition—we don't pair bond with strangers who are too strange, 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're 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. If you're a therapist, you can't do that; I have to sit with my feelings and not jump up and act out. I regret that, but we're human—though we're paid to do otherwise, and your partner isn't. 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.

Knowledge is power. Understanding how the brain works, understanding how these systems work, understanding your partner inside out—being an expert on your partner. If your survival mattered to you and you thought about it, you'd 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'd better know the animal you picked and how to work with this animal—be an animal whisperer with this one. They're not you.

And if you're a team, you're going to need them. It matters if they go down, and you'd better know exactly the right way to pick them back up. Again, what's the point otherwise?

So this is an orientation, and couples are simply not oriented toward being a survival team. But they are — they just haven't been tested yet. Life hasn't thrown them that curve. You're not in Bosnia during that time, you're not in Ukraine or Russia now, you're not in Gaza. The whole orientation is different there; they know what's important, which is protecting each other. We don't. We're asleep. That's the denial system, because constant planning for this kind of thing would get in the way of living.

But that planning starts with the building blocks: reining each other in, being safe and secure, and predicting, planning, and preventing future problems by anticipating them ahead of time. It does the same thing — you don't have to build a bomb shelter together. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the two of you knowing how to build structure, how to reshape your relationship 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.

Asked for the most important principles couples should follow to create secure-functioning relationships — the kind that protect against the slings and arrows coming from outside — Stan Tatkin offered two.

Repair to the other person's satisfaction

If you do nothing else, make sure you repair to the other person's satisfaction. Watch their face relax; if they're not relaxed, you're not done yet. Repair, fix, make amends — probably immediately or within 30 minutes. Make that a habit, make it a law, make it what must happen.

Otherwise, he warned, you'll die sooner, because of the corticosteroids you produce under the stress of a breach. You're setting both yourself and the other person up for long-term damage.

It doesn't matter how you repair. If you can do nothing else, you can say to each other, "I hate you right now, but we're okay." It turns out the "we're okay" is sufficient to sleep through the night or get through your day — because without it, you won't be performing at your optimum level. You're settling the existential question that arises with every breach: when we fight, will this relationship exist tomorrow? Are we okay? Just doing that minimum puts you ahead of most couples.

He and his wife have a rule: they can go to bed angry, but they have to at least touch toes. That's harder than it sounds, but there's an immediate reward for doing the right thing when it's the hardest thing to do — your self-esteem goes right up, because you know you did the hardest thing when it was hardest. We're already doing the easy things; that's not a good line.

A purpose-centered life is decided ahead of time that something is right, best, or good — agreed by both — and then planned for the moment you don't 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. That's a good life — the only reliable thing that's ever been a good life. It earns love and respect as you prove to each other daily that you stick to your principles, and when you fail, you fall on your swords, beg forgiveness, and make it right.

Design your relationship explicitly

The second principle: design your relationship. Start with who you are, shared power, shared authority — something other than the default. You have to be explicit and think ahead. If you agree one person is in charge, remember that means you don't get the final say on anything — unless you build that in somehow.

You have to be an adult, because your individual lives are now your own, not your parents'. As a couple, you're on your own; you're the leaders here. No therapist is going to define your relationship for you — it's your gig. You can have it any way you want, and people have some very strange and novel arrangements. That's fine; they work because they fully agree and have worked it out.

But it's all explicit, never implied. If it's implied, someone will abuse that reality. It has to be explicit and agreed upon like a blood oath, because your lives depend on adhering to it. You have to drink the Kool-Aid and buy into it, because you're expected to come through when you least want to — and that will happen for sure.

Stan Tatkin, everyone. Stan, I think you're brilliant and your work rules. Where should people go to check out everything you do?

The PACT Institute is the place to go: thepactinstitute.com. If you're a couple, there's a couple area devoted to you, with workshops, retreats, and materials. And if you're a clinician — which is how this started — we do trainings all over the world, and you can find that information there as well. There's also a new product called the Win-Win Couple, the first time we've filmed how to work together collaboratively under stress. That video is now available on the website.

Stan, I appreciate you. Until next time.

Chris, you're terrific. I wish every interviewer were like you.

Congratulations — you made it to the end of a podcast episode without dying. Now, here's another one.