Couples Therapist: “The One Rule Every Relationship Must Live By” - Stan Tatkin -#1146

Modern Wisdom

In this episode of Modern Wisdom, psychologist and couples therapist Dr. Stan Tatkin explores the science behind lasting relationships, emphasizing that love alone

Key takeaways

• Romantic relationships are neurochemically intense because they mirror early childhood attachment bonds tied to survival.
• Love alone is insufficient for long-term relationship success; feelings fluctuate, but design and commitment endure.

Main topics

• Neurochemistry of romantic attachment
• The importance of repair in conflict resolution

Notable quotes

"Love by design, not desire."

"We're not going to make it somehow. That's issue one."

Conclusion

Dr. Stan Tatkin concludes that lasting relationships are not accidental but engineered through shared

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) 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 worldview 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. Speaker 1 (0:47) 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... 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? Speaker 1 (1:43) 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 in 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, you know, 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. Speaker 1 (2:50) 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 worst, we still draw upon that earliest, you know, because that's the root of our experience through thousands upon thousands of interactions starting from infancy, post-natal. So, powerful. Is love enough to maintain a relationship? Absolutely not. Speaker 1 (3:45) 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, you know, I'm wiping your butt? Speaker 1 (4:44) 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. 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 willow room necessary as we change through time, right? Otherwise, we're going to, you know... Speaker 1 (5:57) We're not going to 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, most like that earliest one, based on survival, it has a long memory and we tend to be proxies for everybody who came. forward, 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. Speaker 1 (6:58) 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 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. If I'm going to behave according to how I feel, which is pretty much everybody on the planet mostly, then it stands to reason that we're going to have a hard time getting along, right? Speaker 1 (7:53) 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 postmortems, 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 their culture was and how are we going to be protected from each other because we're animals. Speaker 1 (8:48) 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, a free, fair, you know, volunteer system of individuals coming together of equal power and authority, at least on the face of it. It should be 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 we both, right? What is best, so say we both. Or what, you know, is right. Those are the three. And without that, it's going to be the wild ones. Speaker 1 (9:50) Does that mean that discussing non-negotiables and practical things in advance and as early as possible is actually the romantic thing to do? 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 a 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. Speaker 1 (10:49) 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, 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. Speaker 1 (11:34) Right? That's if we're, you know, 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... you know, 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, you know, we're in it to win it, you know, we're a survival team, we want to win, we want to make money, we want to succeed, we want to survive. Speaker 1 (12:27) 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 going to fight or they'll drift because that's what holds us together. What's the importance of agreements? Speaker 1 (13:19) That's all we've got to keep us from being harmful to each other. All we have is our pacts, our agreements, our social contracts. Civilization is 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, you know, that was a powerful thing to get people to start to behave. a way of getting people to stop harming each other with the Ten 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. Speaker 1 (14:11) 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? Back in my day, I had to walk 10 miles to the local store. Aren't you younger than me? Yeah, but my dad got a DUI. Speaker 1 (14:41) Anyway, the reality is most businesses just get the website wrong. And if your setup is messy, you lose a ton of sales, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Shopify. They power 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including brands like Gymshark, Skims, Allo, and Nutanix. Because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout's 36% better on average compared to other platforms. And with ShopPay, it can boost conversions by 50%. So. Speaker 1 (15:09) upgrade your business and get the exact same checkout that we use at Newtonic with Shopify. You can sign up for a free trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com slash modern wisdom. That's shopify.com slash modern wisdom. Why do we make the fundamental agreement to prioritize each other above everything else at all times? You don't have to. You could agree that our sales come first. Then you'd have to describe that to each other, define that. What does that really mean? Same with a relationship. Speaker 1 (15:38) What does it mean? Impractical 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... Speaker 1 (16:35) 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. But so we're just walking through the day doing things automatically and reflexively based