you know the way people deal with problems the way people protect themselves or their relationship from problems backfires and becomes a prison [Music] hello and welcome i'm shane parish and this is the knowledge project a podcast exploring the ideas methods and mental models that help you master the best of what other people have already figured out to learn more find show notes or stay up to date on new episodes go to FS
blog slash podcast fair enough street puts together a weekly newsletter that i think you'll love it's called brain food and it comes out every sunday much like this podcast it's high signal timeless and mind-expanding read what you're missing at FS blog slash newsletter today I'm speaking with Sue Johnson a clinical psychologist and the developer of emotionally focused couples therapy she's widely regarded as one of the best
if not the best couples therapist in North America sue is the author of hold me tight which is hands-down the best relationship book I've ever read she followed that up with love science which is also worth reading and I must say when my friends found it I was gonna interview sue I was flooded with emails and questions for her everyone was interested in talking about relationships which was a bit unexpected for me before the interview I was
thinking about how is gonna structure the interview to fit all of these questions in and well I couldn't ask everything I wanted to the conversation is structure around the arc of a relationship from first dating a new love all the way to retirement we talk to everything in between so we talk kids affairs warning signs your relationship is in trouble and even when to call it quits I want to preface this conversation with the fact that this is
not relationship advice for you specifically and we'll sue as a professional and I am clearly not you should seek advice from someone more close to the situation with context and specifics to you as an individual and you as a couple this conversation will be hard for many of you and I'm sure there's aspects of your relationship you're gonna pick up on and say see I told you and your partner is probably going to do the same you're both right
so let's listen and learn how to make that conversation more [Music] before we get started here's a quick word from our sponsor this episode is sponsored by mud mud as masala chai based coffee alternative that improves your focus the four medicinal mushrooms that are in mud give you the benefits of coffee but avoid the dreaded caffeine crash if you have trouble sleeping at night or can't remember the last time
you dreamt try mud is your new morning ritual instead of coffee we had it here at the office and everyone loves it if you're wondering it tastes like chai and chocolate if you want to try go to mud water calm and enter Furnham at the checkout for $10 off that's mu d WC are calm and enter the code Furnham for $10 off I was telling you before we started recording that this interview has prompted more unsolicited questions from
friends and colleagues than any other interview and I was trying to think of how to incorporate a variety of different situations into our conversation and I think I landed on let's walk through the life cycle of relationships from start to finish so I think well let's start with the stereotypical younger couple falling in love and let's go through the whole arc until death in terms of what will go down some paths and in terms of talking
about infidelity and children and sort of like empty nesting and retirement and these big sort of markers and relationship yes I think like let's start with based on what you know about love and how we're brought up how do we choose a mate how do we go into that decision with just I'll leave it there how do we choose a mate I'll leave it as broad as I can well of course there's lots of issues there and sexuality comes
in there you know I mean we we are drawn especially when we're young adults we drawn to what we see is sexually attractive I mean that Prime's our approaching people you know it Prime's our desire to get close but I think we focus on that a lot but there's a lot more to it than that who you're attracted to it won't just be you know as my daughter says who's the hottest man in the room right it's God but it seems to me that she can walk
into a room and almost every man in the room is hot that's kind of the stage she's in right now so you know well how does that help you differentiate then but we bring our histories with us you know I ask couples when they come in I don't say have you ever had any secure attachment because that's a bit abstract I say things like when you grew up in your family could you if you got upset could you turn to someone in your family
and do you what they reliably come and hold you and some people say oh yes yes my dad would come and he'll and other people say hold me when I cried just listen to the voice you know the answer right this is foreign territory for this
person so I think people who've experienced safe connection with a parent have a big advantage and research says that they're more likely to have friends in high school they're more likely to have better be better friends
themselves and they're more likely to be empathic with any person they're dating right they're more likely to find happy dating relationships well of course they are because they've got a model they know what a good relationship looks like they know what it feels like to be vulnerable with something right to be vulnerable with someone and to have that person respond so they have certain it's more than expectations it's almost like
a visceral map for what this is supposed to feel like expectation sounds cognitive you know so it's it's a visceral map of what relationships look like and what's allowed in relationships and what you're supposed to do so folks
that have had secure attachment in childhood are at an advantage you know it's like love is a gift that keeps on giving when you know what it looks like then you know you're better at putting your hand on it in the world right so
you know if you come from a securely attached you know for example a give you example I talked about my dad my dad always treated me with the most amazing respect I can't imagine one time when my dad ever implied that because I was a girl I couldn't do anything although my views weren't okay it's bigger than expectations you have a template you have a of how you expect to be treated and what you're looking for in
relationships so if you if you are loved in childhood you know what that feels like then you can go out and you can you can tell when that's a possibility when it isn't many of us have no idea we don't know what we're
looking for we just don't want to be lonely anymore and we want somebody have fun with and we want someone to have sex with and you know we're caught up in the society thing of you know girls are supposed to look like this and guys are
supposed to you know look like that you know and and we get all caught up in that but the bottom line is I think that people people are seeking out people to connect with and what I've always tried to tell my children is you can be attracted to lots of people in a very superficial way and you know you can you you're going to experiment with relationships you are because because you have to get to know this dance right
and you're going to make mistakes but you know what you really need to is listen to yourself and listen to when you feel safe and when dancing with someone is easy and makes you feel good and when you can be vulnerable for a moment and that person tunes in and cares about your vulnerability that's the person to go with are those the little sort of bids that you're putting out there that people are reciprocally lovely words you're using it's a bit
it's a bit and people don't realize what they're doing you know I mean I'm tuned into relationships so I watch them all the time in airports and among my friends and I'm tuning on a different level than most of them are I can't help it you know this is my job at this point but people are making bids and you're even watching people I'm fly a lot so even watching people on a plane you know you sit down next to somebody and you
might make a comment and they don't look you in the eye they turn their head away they and you immediately get that they're close they don't want to connect with you and then you might make a little bid for a connection with somebody else and they turn towards you they turn in this seat they give you eye contact they look at you they smile they make a comment they respond to what you said ah this person wants to dance right and
then the point is most of us haven't been taught to tune in on that level you know um I don't entertain tango and the fascinating thing about that is that for the first three years its Argentine tango is very difficult it's a nerd dance basically okay and for the first three years I I sort of thought I was learning it and then one night a stranger came and I started dancing with him and he broke all the rules you're
not supposed to do this he stopped in the middle of Thorin he said what are you doing I said this is incredibly rude right I said I'm dancing I'll go with you is it no you're not I said uh I'm sorry he said you're not you're in your head predicting what you think I'm gonna ask you to do and doing the steps in your head I said ah you're not with me I said oh he said forget all the steps in your head just feel the movement in my
body feel the momentum listen to the music and the beat feel it let the dance do you oh my god so tango changed that night into something totally different and magical and I became aware of what was going on on a whole different level people who have close relationships are more able to tune a tune in that way they tune into the relational drama that's going on in a relationship other people do what I was doing there in the
head predicting stuff doing tasks you know you say to people why did you get married and some people say things like oh I don't know like you know what we both like canoeing you know and my other girlfriend did
like canoeing and I wanted to convey weekend and she'd canoe and I thought it was time to get married it's convenient yeah it's like it's a deal right and and they're not tuned into the relational aspect I think I always have been and I think
it's something to do with growing up in an English pub and spending my childhood I didn't spend my children watching TV I spent my childhood watching adults get slightly drunk and and remote all over the place and fight and cry and tell stories and turned to my dad for support and tell their stories of the war some people would have thought it was very inappropriate for me as a child but that's what I grew up with so I tuned
into that level and so young adults who can Choong into this emotional level and who know what love feels like and who've seen love in operation felt it they're better at seeking it out they're better at tuning in on that level they they want a dance with someone who will tune into them and respond to them and wear something they feel safe enough with that person where they can play and that's constructive bonding right and so of course that's
only the beginning you fall in love with somebody and then usually everything goes wrong because you know they're bound to disappoint you right it's been kind of interesting with my kids too you know like of course my kids call me up when they have fights with their partner of course they do I'm better than call really but you know and of course they things go wrong and they fight they hurt each other and that's relationship if
you dance with somebody they're going to step on your feet they're going to go left when you expect to go right that's just the way it is the point is in a good relationship you can recognize what's happened and you can tune in you can repair it and I think my kids have found partners who are responsive to them it's emotional responsiveness that's the basis of a secure bond what is emotional responsiveness emotional
responsiveness is al abstract word that captures a lot it's the ability the all the willingness that someone has to tune in to you emotionally and to allow themselves to tune into your nonverbals or your words and to allow themselves to feel what you're feeling and who respond to that in a way that you feel that you matter you that all sounds very elaborate until I say something like you are a social bonding mammal you pick up the cues from if
you're paying attention that's a big issue in life if you're paying attention you pick up the cues from somebody's face and 100 milliseconds and if you're paying attention the muscles in your face automatically imitate what you see on those other without the person's face the mirror neurons in your brain fire and if you're paying attention you feel in your body what you see on the other person's face now if you've had a
reasonably good history of love relationships you feel in your body and you have a sense of how to respond so in a in a positive relationship or when we help couples heal the relationship we see that the person isn't overwhelmed by that I said oh my goodness this person's angry at me what am I going to do you know they they they they listen to it and they see the hut and the other person's eyes and they respond and they say they reach out and
they touch they say I'm so sorry did I hurt your feelings I think I did I think you're feeling bad right now that's emotional responsiveness and whether you're a mother or child or an adolescent with your very best friend or your sibling or a romantic partner that's what makes for a positive bond that responsiveness when you see distress couples that's blocked they're all caught up in dealing with their own hurt or their own fears your people
think that conflict is the issue in distressed relationships conflict is the virus the inflammation is emotional disconnection that you can't connect with this person you can't get this person to respond to you this person isn't responding to you so emotionally you're alone the person is in the room with you but emotionally you're alone so are you escalating intentionally almost to provoke a response no it's not that conscious or
unconscious yes it's in in distressed relationships the most common pattern we see is one person is demanding and getting angry and criticizing and the other person is defending and distancing and the way we understand the demanding is that they can be talking about anything I can only be talking about finances or sex or they can be talking about anything or how bad this other person is right there be talk about anything but if you listen to the
emotion you look at their face and we're pretty good at that right now what they're really saying is where are you where are you where are you and if the other person doesn't respond they say it louder they say I'll get you to respond to me where are you you're a bad pop Oh that'll get your attention right but unfortunately nothing I have to do to get your attention is threaten you and then you go with the threat and
you say I don't want to talk right now and then or you you escalated you escalate you think I'm a bad partner what about this thing that you did that's right you fight back you attack back so we look at all these negative
patterns and relationships and we we feel we understand them at this point and so we help the demanding critical partner we say could you help me you're talking to your partner about how you're just you're disappointed in them and
that you feel like this relationship is empty for you and you're expressing a lot of anger and frustration but then you turned and you looked away in your eyes filled with tears could you help me this is very painful for you
and the person says well of course it is he's so distant he she goes back to attacking him but we'll just stay with what we just said we go into the the emotional Channel and we stay there and in the end the people can't we say yes
you're very there's something here that's very painful for you and you're getting very angry and you push him to talk and she says yes I push him you push him and if you don't push him and if he won't talk no matter how angry you get now critical you get then her face changes and she goes back to what I saw a few moments before she says then I'm all by myself so yes you're all by yourself and he doesn't care about me
and I'm not important to him and I don't matter to him and I by myself and then she weeps and that's the desperation under the anger but you don't have in this bonding situation we desperately need the other person to respond to us emotional isolation is traumatizing for human beings you're not wired for it it's a danger queue for your nervous system we desperately need other people to respond and they're really these
dramas happen when we're very young we don't have many strategies we really don't and the one that automatically comes to mind is that we yell and scream and we we push you know I remember a woman saying to me I poked him and poked him and poked him and poking a new kit him to respond to me because if I don't recipient respond to me there's no relationship and I've lost him and I'm all by myself and I'm in panic and loss
and she is the word panic and that's a reality the you know researchers have looked at you can use em fMRI machines and yak tanks that was a famous researcher he's just died who looked at the brain and he said we're bonding mammals we need connection with others like we need oxygen we're way too vulnerable without it right and we become obsessed with danger and when we feel rejected and abandoned by the person we most depend on there's a
special pathway in our emotional brain and it's reserved for attachment panic and he used that word and I believe that research because the number of people that I have sat and talked with from all cultures and all genders and all over the world and all classes the number of people that I have talked with who will actually come up with that word who will say well I don't know what it is I don't know what it is but it
feels really bad you know and I can't breathe when I'm talking about it and it feels awful and I just felt hesitate it's almost like you know it's like it's like a kind of panic and I say yeah you know it's we panic we can't get the person to respond to us because the cause the other person were craving that attachment that craving that connection and we don't know how to talk about it in a way that pulls our partner close
and when we push and criticize and complain and demand we look more and more dangerous to our partner and they their favorite strategy that they probably learned when they grew up right that was the only one that kept them safe was to shut down and one thing people don't understand is they don't understand the impact of shut down you'll hear people say in all relationships in families or they say well I stopped talking because
everything I say is wrong and it's only gonna make things worse and I stopped talking because I don't know what to say and I just get the message that I'm disappointing I've failed already I'm never gonna please this person so I
go I freeze I just say the best way to stop the argument is to not talk I stopped talking I stopped talking to protect myself because I don't know what there's all amazingly good reasons okay we have good reasons for what we do what
they don't understand is that in an intimate relationship if I cut off emotionally and I shut down I shut you out and if I shut you out and you're a bonding mammal and not a lizard and you care about me I trigger danger cues and fear in your brain that's just because that's the way you're wired it doesn't you can do different things with it you can try and shut it down or you know you can get violent you can deal with it in
different ways there's a there's a range there but bottom line is what I just said isn't negotiable our emotional life is structure your nervous system is structured to avoid danger and to move to what will fulfill your needs to survive and love is structured the way we dance with other people is structured your nervous system is structured and you know we we need to understand that these things are not social conventions they're not made
up you know New York Times writes articles about how our romantic love is changing and you know we're all going to be polyamorous or we're gonna have hookups until we're 60 and it's all going to be great and there's going to be lots of freedom and emotional and sexual whatever but know that no there isn't sorry because it's not something we make up and decide on it's structured by your mammalian brain we can do social
experiments until we're purple and some of them are work and some of them will work better than others but bottom line is that's like there's a structure of your body and your body has limits there's a structure to our emotional life there's a structure to your nervous system there's a structure to your intimate relationships you certa morning your books that were actually meant to be monogamous yes and that's an interesting point of view highly
unpopular in many places in the world these days I've been accused of being Oh what was the last lot did you know that I'm a naive conservative Canadian sorry I'm not conservative actually at all if you knew me I'm terribly liberal I am Canadian and very proud of it and I really take objection to the word naive because I may be many things but I'm not naive I am very good at what I do and I know an awful lot about what I do so I'm
not no no but yeah I was because this lady told me on a big listserv which will be nameless but basically she said you know your ideas about monogamy are disgusting I said well I'm sorry but that's a very emotional word so let's take the emotion out of it I can give you six scientific arguments as to why we're we're wired for monogamy would you like to find me one science study that suggests that it's better for
you would you find me the one study that says that people thrive more and where you know most people will thrive more if they have many many sexual relationships and even in terms of sex the best Survey Research in North America is by a man called illumine at the University of Chicago he just fantastic I hate surveys right there they're so biased jorts the question as you ask you're gonna get the answers you were looking for but he's right he's
good and he he's written these books like sex in America and he's fantastic and what he basically said is just in terms of sex the people who have report having the best sex have it most often are the most satisfied with it and find it most thrilling are people in a long-term stable stable connected exclusive relationship yeah you know I mean and I can tell you all the reasons why I think that's true but the zeitgeist out in the world is we're
looking for freedom we don't want to be repressed oh I agree repression doesn't work but we're looking for freedom and you know we're looking for let's all you know somehow marriage is a prison or never my marriage long-term is a prison and you know we we have to have lots of sexual partners to be satisfied and not sex is about novelty this is excuse me this is cliche number 34 I'm very sorry let's talk about that one
but you know what's the evidence for that you know I mean it's we've got all these revolutionary ideas that aren't revolutionary I gave a talk at a big conference recently and I said you know we think these ideas are revolutionary but if you if you look at even things like the adulthood of Ernest Hemingway in in you know in Paris you know when he was in Paris you know he was round around round the area
of the Second World War people in Paris were doing all the things that we're doing now we didn't call them hook up they didn't call them hook ups they just went slept with lots of people they didn't you know they did have the same language but they were trying to have lots of relationships they were trying to open a relationship no people have been doing this forever but bottom line is for most people most of the time you know serial monogamy
seems to be the most natural way that it works because it's all about it's not just about sex is about attachment and attachment tends to be hierarchical we can love more than one person but in terms of who you turn to when you really need in terms of where you take your vulnerability it's usually hierarchical we have our special one and most people want to be the special one for somebody else and most people want a special one you
know and that's the person that you turn to so let's explore that a little bit in the context of our hypothetical couple who've no fallen in love gotten married and they want to deepen their relationship what does it mean to be the
person that somebody turns to what are the obligations and the skills of anything that you need to learn and what is it what does it mean to be the person deepening the connection how do you deepen that that relationship to the
point where it's trusting and it's loving and it's caring but you you want to explore it more and through exploring it you really exploring yourself and your partner well that's a huge question but it's all have a go there's no simple answer yeah love is simple but it's not easy but that's what I always think anyway with huge focus on the science love isn't that complicated but it's not easy there's lots of you know different
ways it can turn out but the bottom line is you're constantly building trust in what I would call constructive dependency your base your constantly building trust and how do you build trust you take risks with each other you show yourself your you're open and accessible and you take risks with each other and when one of you takes the risk the other one responds and by respond I don't always mean like does something magical like
the movies okay like that's not why I mean you just stay emotionally present securely attached people know the power of emotional presence you know the parent who's helping a child in pain the parent doesn't have the solution to the pain per se your men husband's always think they're going to problem solve and solve all their wife's problems they don't understand that usually their wife's looking for just them they are
the answer to her problem they just wants their emotional presence I shouldn't keep doing this gender thing sometimes it goes the other way right but you know it's the emotional presence that's key so for example you you might
take a risk and share something with your partner and your partner doesn't know what to do with it isn't quite sure how to respond so I've seen people at the end of eft turn to I seen a man who before would just shut down because I
don't want to do with that right and he trusts his partner he says I see that you're hurting and I don't really understand it but I don't want you to be alone in it I want to be with you and I don't know what to do she burst into tears and she says you just did it he said what did I do she said you just came and met me you just came and met me that's what I need you don't have to solve my problem you don't have to create magic you have to
be with me and a good relationship grows from moments like that a good relationship you know and fights in a way can help a good relationship grow because you hurt each other's feelings and then what you're going to do well what is secure attachment you know and this is beyond romantic relationships if you watch her mother in an adolescent we have research on the fact that insecure attachment the mother and the
adolescent and I was think of my son in this case but the mother and the adolescent will have a big fight because we have big fights when we have fights we have big fights and when he was 17 we had glorious fights so but the issue is
we can turn back towards each other you know and we can we can tune in and we can repair and as you know the fights not going to be the end of that relationship you're securing the fact that it's gonna that's right I know we
know that in the end we are mother and son we are bonded forever the question in relationship distress relationships is always the same all over the world at every age where are you where are you to care about me do i matter to you will you respond to me will you be there when I'm vulnerable am i safe with you where are you where are you and when the answer is I'm here you can deal with almost anything you can deal with you
can you can deal with anything you you can fight you can be different you know people say all relationships are based on being this being not too many differences I say are you joking everyone's based being compatible you
know it's like we're like wait I've been married for 35 years and you know my husband likes hiking up bloody great Canadian mountains and I hate it if it walks slightly up a slope I get ticked off you know like we're yeah we're we're
all different you know but this emotional responsiveness is what grows relationships and you can see it here's the thing it's not I'm not talking about something obtuse and abstract we just don't know how to tune in you can see it at airports when I'm at airports i watch people okay it's easier to watch a mother and child because the emotions are also clear as adults we sort of fudge them and disguise them but you
know I'll watch one mother and child and the child is trying to get their mother's attention the child's going she holds it her toy and the man look at her cellphone and the mother says what you're fine she's not looking at the kid emotionally she's absent like people might say the mothers with the child she's fine no emotionally she's absent she's not looking at the kid and the kids saying respond to me over there where I you
respond to me right and the mother's going no no I'm sorry I'm tuning you out your secondary you know you're not that important right there's huge emotional significant messages in these interactions that we don't churn into
and we get them on a visceral level so then the child gets really upset and the mothers still looking of phone the mother says oh you're fine and she picks up a bottle from her bag and she hands it to the kid there's no connection
there so the kid this I remember this kid particularly because the kid's been you know getting quite upset and then the kid gets the bottle the mother's given her food right she should calm down the kid goes into this vacant stare she lets the bottle drop on the floor the mother doesn't even notice and the kid starts staring into space across across the room the big foyer you know the airport for you and the mother says
that's better now you're fine and I feel like dashing over to the mother and saying no no no your kid just shut down into fries do you understand your kid just gave up on connecting with you your kids gone into fries your kids freaked out she's just spaced out she's shut down because she you aren't responding to her fear and there's no other way of dealing with it we don't have many ways we don't have many options in this basic
emotional dance and then you watch another mother it's a whole different bag you watch the kid get upset and the mother's busy in the airport agent is saying ma'am I need your passport I know you that I need and this mother said to the agent said just a minute please she turned to her kin she said he's okay sweetie oh you've lost your bear you've lost your bear look he's there we'll go get him shall we go she made the agent wait
right I thought look at that she picks up the bear she gives us the kisses there you go she picks and all she says really is there you go but listen to her voice Dada da Dada Dada Dada Dada Dada that a lot of this is the motional music we're playing people pick up on the emotional music it defines it defines the dance so that mother said to the kid oh you're there I see you your pain matters to me I'm here I'll respond to you I'll put
you first you matter I'm here you don't have to be afraid you're safe I'm here and the kid goes huh the kids fine and then she turns back and says now what what do you need to need my passport see that's two ends of the scale and give you extreme right I'm getting you extremes but most of us go in the middle where we we don't always hear our kids but then we do and we turn and we respond what effect does kids have on the relationship the bond the
attachment between the parents that's a really interesting one because suddenly two becomes three not only that but suddenly for most couples there's some real factors that impact things like much more work and fatigue you know often their sexual relationship go straight downhill and we can make all kinds of funny meanings about that but the bottom line is your sexuality shuts down when you're sleep-deprived duh it
would be dysfunctional if it didn't wouldn't it so you know like you know you just don't have the energy for a glorious orgasm because your nervous system has already said I want a holiday thanks very much I'm done you know like so you know all kinds of changes happen and people also feel often when a woman's had a baby and she's gone through childbirth she suddenly feels responsible person but she'll tune into her
vulnerability and so she wants emotional support and sometimes the husband is into oh my goodness me I'm a father my goodness me up in not losing my job my goodness me I've got to work harder I got to protect I got her so the husband gets into tasks right when the woman needs his emotional connection right and the woman is fatigued and she doesn't have much bandwidth emotionally so she's more labile and she's more vigilant for
disconnection and they're both trying to take care of this little tiny demanding bonding mammal and so there's a lot of stress involved and a lot of change and a lot of transition and when people don't know how to create these secure safe bonding scenarios and support each other emotionally everything starts to go downhill and people step into these negative cycles I call them Diamond dialogues because a demon comes and
takes over your relationship in home in the my book hold me tight I call them diamond dialogues because that's how people experience them they say I don't know what happened to us I always started having these horrible fights and
you know we were fine until the baby came along and then right and it's the demon comes in and takes over right and suddenly everybody's irritable and suddenly everybody's somebody's shutting down and somebody's demanding and you're
caught in the usual demand withdraw dance that destroys relationships and nobody's taking any time for themselves some of it is I really think in our society why do we when a woman has a baby leave her alone in a little box called an apartment and take her away from all her social contacts and off after she doesn't live in the same city as her mother and her sisters and she doesn't have social contacts and her husband's
at work all day so she's taking care for this baby tuning into vulnerability right and she we make sure she's alone in it that's ridiculous I mean really in most tribal societies when a woman has a baby it's a signal for the community to come around and support her support the parents help them become parents you know give them social support take care of the baby sometimes you know it's it's just an instinctive thing right there's a new
life it needs protection it needs care let's all come round and do it this is a tribal thing we completely lost that we've totally lost that and you know often what happens is a woman's alone with a baby all day and then her husband comes home well he's exhausted right he wants a bit of a break she's hungry for connection she's had a baby throwing up on her and yelling all day and you know it's like talk to me somebody talked to me and he
says oh you're so demanding you know can't you even let me get in the door and he said basically she's know I need you to talk to me and he says you know so then it starts to go wrong but but if you know how to have these what we call hold me tight dialogues if you know how to if you know how to understand when you get in conflict if you can if you know how to contain that conflict by by sort of recognizing what's going on hey
we're caught in a dance we're caught in a dance here it's not that you're a bad person or a terrible husband or a mean man or a mean woman it's that look at what's happening to us what's happening to us if you can take that kind of
perspective and you have enough trust then to turn into talking about your emotions and helping each other with them you can deal with that transition you'll have bad times but you can deal with it but often what is it like
reveals the stress reveals the cracks in the in the relationship you know where people don't trust each other and the sexuality disappears which people often rely on that those moments to create connection then everything starts to go wrong everything starts to go wrong what role does sex play in a happy healthy marriage sex plays an important role I think the tricky part is I mean sex can be different at different times you
know sex can be many things at different times sex can be purely about the release of tension sex can be erotic play sex can it can change in a relationship there's flexibility you can you can it can mean different
things at different times right but in general if you listen to people in happy healthy relationships they'll talk more about sex as a bonding activity it's not just about release it's not just about orgasm it's not just a value rata sysm
it's we make you know human beings make love face to face it doesn't have to be face to face but you get the idea we make love face to face and there's certainly there's a huge bonding element it's not accident that an orgasm we're flooded with oxytocin which is a bonding hormone you know and if you look at securely attached folks they'll say oh well sex is fun and it's it's about eroticism and it's about you know being
pleasured physically and sensation but it's also about being close to my partner I like being close to my pond the interesting thing about that one is the cliche out in the world is men only want an orgasm well if that's true you know I mean masturbation is a much more efficient path to that and it's simpler and you have to deal with anybody else and I kind of worked Annanagar if he's teaching us there yes basically prologue
Rafi teaches us that but if you listen to men and I've listened to a lot of men if you listen to men talk about in a more emotionally open level what men talk about is not that different from what women talk about men in the end well I can't tell you how many times this has happened men will say well you know I can give myself an orgasm if I really want an orgasm what I want is to be desired I want to be desired and the most concrete way of
feeling desired is for you to desire me to come close and for us to make love I want to be desired and you know our society is a bit insane about sex I mean my fields insane about sex we have one discipline called sex therapy and another discipline called relationship couple therapy how ridiculous is that I mean that's ridiculous okay what I'm talking about is actually attachment science helps us understand sex and relationships and for
goodness sake you know we need to put those two things together it's ridiculous that sex therapists don't know anything about relationships that's ridiculous you know and it's ridiculous that relationship service don't learn anything about sex it's like are you kidding me you're it's like so but sexuality is important and for a secure couple it's a bonding activity and it's about closeness and connection
as well as about you know the release of tension or pleasurable sensation the the world out there tells us some very funny things about sex one of the things I really object to it really annoys me because it's like misinformation as far as I'm concerned and it can hurt people is that people say things like well long-term relationships you're bound to lose your sexual charge to sex has the best before date you know familiarity is
deadening and secure connection makes you know is the enemy of eroticism and what you need to keep your sex life alive is is novelty you either need lots of strange positions or you need lots of sex toys or you need other people you
bring other people in and this is very popular point of view out there all kinds of journalists are pushing it all kinds of people are making money on books pushing it and it annoys me not from any moral issue or any not from any
stance of coming from sherds okay I don't have any issues around that okay it annoys me because it's not true it annoys me because it's misinformation it annoys me because it's not what I see and what I've experienced my years of working with couples and and lamins research basically says the people who have the best sex of the people who feel safe and connected with each other and who have exclusive relationships and that makes sense to me
it makes sense to me on lots of levels mostly of which come out of bonding science what is passion and I think we should all be asking ourselves this because Hollywood gives us nonsense and pawn gives us nonsense and journalists who say they're experts in relationships give us nonsense what is passion well as far as I can see you know passion is belonging for connection there's a longing in there you might not say it's
for connection but there's a longing right to be with this person this process desired it's a longing there's an emotional component and then it's put together with the ability to play to play erotically to be unpredictable to have a safe to turn going to bed together into a safe adventure it's put together you know and that fits for me when I talk to securely attached couples they're not in love all the time but
over a lifetime they can fall in love again and again and again because they know how to have hold me tight conversations but you know sexuality if you're going to really get into it and let yourself go into it and let yourself
fall into it and let it take you over and let it take you to different places and let it be thrilling and unusual and you play with somebody in each dance time your dance is different you have to feel safe it's the opposite
of novelty actually you need novelty when you're numbed out and shut down and you need more and more novel sensation to have you get turned on that's the way I see it novelty is about how we've numbed out our sexuality not how no it's not about freedom so you know the way I always say it to my students is imagine that you're going on a zipline and you test the zipline before you let go and the zipline is strong and your belted in
and you feel good then you let go on the zipline you go we are this exciting and thrilling and interesting and you're not quite sure where you're gonna end up but who cares because you're okay that's secure attachment I can let go and be with you we can play we can be and we can be open and erotic with each other we can tell each other our fantasies we can play as lovers and then in the next minute we can hold each other and and be
safe havens secure base for each other which is what as a secure bond is that's that secure attachment the other kind of sexuality is like imagine how much you're likely to really let go and totally get engaged and absorbed and completely enjoy it if you notice just before you kick off that there's a crack in there in the line well you might get a little thrill oh my god is a crack in the line oh wow but in fact you know you you're not
really gonna let go and enjoy the ride that's how I see it I mean it's securely attached people report better sex so sex is our way of connecting is a bonding behavior it's it's think of what people do during sex they stare into each other's eyes they touch each other for most adults in North America that's the only place that get touched which is something we should look at I can't remember who did the research but it's
in one of my books for the public but basically this lady did this research so we are the least touching culture anywhere on this planet in North America we don't touch each other is there a correlation between couples that think
it's called like PDA public displays of affection like hand-holding and sort of kissing does that correlate to happier yes I think it does because you're you're reaching for each other and your physical touch is the basic way we have
with human beings of soothing each other you know I look around me and people touch their children but that even that can be different I went to a little if I went to Assisi in Italy for a while and I was watching fathers with their children my god it was so different from North America I mean everywhere you looked there was this Italian man picking up their children caressing their children holding their children reaching for
their children stroke in their children's arms touching their children's leg but is really really interesting so you know culture has a certain amount to do with it but touch is so powerful and if you watch a couple who have just bonded or her feeling close they touch each other you know it's so interesting because I talk at all these big conferences and and sometimes I have this flash I mean my husband comes with me to a lot of
these conferences and I really appreciate him coming I appreciate the support and before a big talk or after a big talk he usually takes my hand he's got very big hands so my hand feels kind of small inside his and I had this flash several times I'm walking down this hall at this huge conference and everyone knows who I am and I suddenly feel sort of shy about the fact that my husband is holding my hand I'm this big expert
right my husband Assad and I feel sort of shy about it but the truth is yes my husband's holding my hand that's right you know and and because because that's what our relationship is you know it's and I think people are starving for touch in our society and they turn it towards sexuality whereas I've heard men say a number of times I just want to be held I just want to be held you know I just want to be close but you know our
culture doesn't encourage men to say that men our culture but in tells people a lie that somehow you're not vulnerable you don't have a need for that connection when you're male that's nonsense right so it's such nonsense but yeah I think touch has it plays a big part and sometimes when a couple when they don't know how to connect emotionally explicitly emotionally when they don't touch very much outside of sex when the sex goes wrong
they had deep trouble you know I remember one particular couple where he was he had a pretty horrendous childhood and he he's had a adulthood full of being of all about power he's very powerful man very had a lot of control in the world and he was used to that right and he basically didn't like to be touched his wife had accommodated to this for years and you know he liked to be in control and not touched and their relationship
worked while they were making love but then he got a little bit older and he got a reptile dysfunction and he found that amazingly humiliating and his way of dealing with the humiliation rather than talking to his partner letting her help him with it which I have seen work really well his way of dealing with it was to totally shut down so then there's no physical contact between him and his wife and there's not much emotional
contact either cuz he's shutting down and suddenly this marriage which has been viable for years is in deep deep trouble and he's enraged because he's used to calling the shots so he's enraged like you know this is what's comfortable for me now and you must accommodate and she's basically saying I'm starving to death you won't talk to me about your emotions you don't touch me I can't touch you there's no I'm starving to death help me
I'm starving to death and he basically says well suck it up well you know and my response to that as a therapist is she can't and it's not about how much she loves you or how mature she is it's about the fact she's a bonding mammal
she can't suck it out what are some of the other reasons that sex stops in relationships we have sex stops for lots of reasons sex stops it's like every other dance you do with your partner things get in the way and block it and
if you can't talk about it together and help each other with it you get stuck you know sex stops because a sexual problem comes up and if the couple can't deal with it together like classic one that I talked about in hold me tight is erectile dysfunction as a man gets older you know the man and it's not the erectile dysfunction itself that's often manageable what isn't manageable is the way people deal with it you're the way people deal with
problems the way people protect themselves or their relationship from problems backfires and becomes a prison right so you know men are humiliated I'm not a man anymore I remember we didn't do a lot of work with heart attack couples we have a program called healing hearts together which is an educational program from which we did with the Heart Institute in Ottawa right that we did and I remember working with one couple when the man
said well he was very you're big he was a manly man you know right well you know since I had the heart attack you know my penis doesn't always work and so I'm not doing it because I'm not a man anymore and this is and he's just saying this is just this is too difficult for me I'm not - I'm not doing it right so then you know his wife feels shut out and he's not talking to her but whether she misses he's she's irrelevant he's
basically saying I'm not doing it and he's all by himself with all this right and so that cuts off sex what you see is that when people can get together and help each other with their vulnerable feelings that shifts and my favorite one is a man that I've got in the hobby type book which was a delightful conversation with a guy you know we talked about his shame and how he you know he doesn't feel like he's a man and we helped him
have conversations with his wife where his wife comforts him and he's able to take that comfort in because he she starts to try and comfort him and he knocks it away when he says no I'm I'm I don't want talk about this because I'm not a man anymore so you know that's how people also block comfort sometimes they block it they say no you know I I can't take it and I don't know what to do with it I don't need it there's something
wrong with me if I need it right so but we helped him take it in and we start talking about the fact and we normalized when you can talk about something with somebody and make it specific and get support everything calms down and you
can sort of look at things in specific terms rather than big general catastrophic terms right so we talked about the fact that never mind his personal thing which is he's had a heart attack and he's on certain drugs for
most men of a certain age if they are going to try and make love to their partner for I don't know 40 minutes basically he calls his penis George okay George is going to take a nap occasionally and a lot of it is about process not about how the problem starts it's what you do once the problem started and whether you do it alone right and we talked about how George takes a nap and that's normal and he says oh I said
it doesn't matter where you've had a heart attack Arrakis normal it's normal said yeah it's normal you just have this big idea that you're supposed to be hot with a penis with you know as long as the you know some monument and as hard as a rock like you did when you were 19 you you think you should stay that way till the day you die you know and that's not normal so it doesn't usually happen it's normal and so we take the sting out
of it that way and they start talking about the fact that sometimes George is going to take a nap that's very different from the shame huge shame thing he and they start talking about how when George takes a nap she knows
how to wake him up and it becomes a playful conversation right and then they tell me wonderful story about how they start to make love and everything goes wrong their kid comes home early and bangs on the door their dog gets into
the bedroom I come with what else to say although some point the candle starts to set the curtains on fire so they know like everything went wrong and George kept taking a nap right and then they gave up and they went down had coffee see they went down had coffee they were together right and then they start joking and playing over coffee and then the play starts to turn into errata sysm and then they go up make now
so again it's about whether you shut down with this kind of where you get caught in shame and fear and turn away from your partner or whether you stay with your partner and your partner is able to help you bonding is all about giving people their emotional balance when you're not alone and somebody's with you and supporting you you can deal with so much with your you have your emotional balance problems are solvable scary realities are
manageable that's what secure connection with another person gives you and the same happens in sex so lots of things can get in the way of sex but the main thing that gets in the way of sex is emotional distance people say if you're a New York journalist you always ask me you know what's the best recipe for a great sex life boring question for me the best and they don't want my I don't want my answer they want to hear something like
oh it's the new sex position from the joy of sex you know wailing monkey climbing tree you know if you if you can do that you're fine this is such nonsense so I say what they don't want to hear the best recipe for a great sex life throughout your life it's safe emotional connection practice makes perfect if you're good at dancing with somebody and you're good at tuning into the emotional and physical music that they play the dance is
endless every time you dance is different it can change and you can deal with stuck places in the dance and it can always be a safe adventure so the best recipe for great sex is emotional connection when emotional connection gets lost when people get angry resentful they feel hurt they feel rejected their ability to really physically engage and be erotic it just goes away you are not wired to deal with
threat and to be turned on at the same time by the way you know that ended years ago those of us in the mists of time who saw a saber-toothed tiger coming through the bush as a big shadow and stopped to masturbate or to get turned on we got eaten okay we didn't pass on our genes okay we just didn't know those of us that saw a shadow in the bush and forgot all about how desire how we were lasting after this war between France and RAM we
survived so you know when people are getting anxious and scared and feeling rejected and abandoned they're not good lovers and they can't focus on their partner and they can't tune in they can't dance together they're just self obsessed with sex so you after what happens these women will say in a distressed relationship you don't want me you just want an orgasm I'm instrumental right right and the man doesn't know how to connect he doesn't
know how to create emotional connection so he says you want to make out and she says no not really stuck and what they both done is they both freaked each other out at that point you know it's that's what they've done lovers scare the hell out of each other of course they do you're more vulnerable to the person you love than anyone in the world right that's part of being loved on the other hand if it's a good relationship you're safer with this
person than anywhere else in the world so that's this kind of paradox of love but you know things interfere with things interfere with sex and as a society it's fascinating to me we seem to be obsessed with sex and we separate it from relatedness which is bizarre to me I would imagine a lot of people come to you having had affairs so I have a lot of questions around affairs why do they happen and maybe after that we can
start talking about what you can do about them or how you can talk to your partner about yeah the myth out there in in society in the magazines and is that we have affairs because we're massively sexual beings and that one person can't possibly be enough for us and da-da-da-da-da right so one way that attachment science is revolutionary and one reason it was so popular unpopular for so long is because it is revolutionary it challenges us our
thoughts was that John Bowlby the father of attachment theory said sex is not the most important motivation in human and neither is aggression Freud was wrong the most important motivation in human beings and the one that carries the huge clout is the need for a connection with another human being yeah and so right there he he basically says there's something more important than sex actually you know we can get
obsessed with it as certain points in our life but it's there's other motivations and that really plays out because when I talk to people about why they have affairs I would say in all my 35 years and I supervised lots of therapists as well in all my 35 years I've maybe heard one to people who are a certain personality type high risk-taking needs to yo climb Everest three times drive fast cars is obsessed with high stimulation right and we're
not let's not talk about what that's about but it's a whole personality type I've heard those guys say oh well you know I just had the affair because I'm just into different women and I just got to have this and I just got to have this this adventure and I gotta like right very very avoidant people who don't trust people at all say things like it wasn't an affair I just had a one-night stand it's no big deal
it's just what I do it was just sex okay there's nothing and there are some people who totally cut themselves off during sex and it really is just a form of mutual masturbation and they don't understand where their partners upset with it so there's different things here but in general the overwhelming thing is people do not have affairs because of sexuality or sexual frustration they have affairs because they're emotionally
disconnected and alone they feel rejected or abandoned by their partner they're getting in terrible fights they feel alone and scared they feel unloved unwanted and helpless and they and the secretary brings them a coffee and she
smiles at them and they suddenly notice how pretty she is they've worked with her for three years but they suddenly notice it's terribly pretty and they noticed that she seems to like them and when they take her for coffee she
listens to them and she she acts like they're the most important person in the world and their whole nervous system starts to respond it's like the sunshine they've been in the dark and there's a sunshine and they start to respond they're having a need fulfilled that's right and it's it's about deprivation not about you know the whole Las takes us over all the time and right that's just a big story okay and it's true of a
few of us but mostly it's not that's a big story and so people turn to other people because they can't get their attachment needs met with their partner and that's the truth and they're hungry for that connection can relationships
heal from Affairs yes always or is no not nothing is always in relationships what's the difference between relationships that heal from affairs and relationships well it's a lot of it I think a lot of it has to do with the
level of trust that you had you know in the relationship and how important the relationship is to you and how much you're willing to work at it we've done we have a whole thing about we call it relationship injuries they're not
necessarily Affairs there can be other injuries in a relationship what are other examples oh I'm going for my chemotherapy the first day and I say you will be there won't you and you say of course I'll be there don't be ridiculous
I'll be there and then five minutes before I'm going you say listen you'll be fine I know your sisters going with you you don't really need me there I'm going I've got to be at this big meeting and then when I come home the extra bit is when I come home and I try and talk to you about that you say I don't know what you're talking about you were fine weren't you fine in others I dismiss it we can't heal it I can try come to you
to try and repair it you don't tune in to me you just miss my need that's an attachment injury it won't go people think people say things like time will heal it will not your brain holds on to it it's significant survival information when you need it your partner wasn't there they're no longer safe you can't count on them your brain will hold on to that the next time you have the opportunity to risk with that part that you won't
you'll hold back you'll keep them out so these injuries redefine the relationship and Affairs can be like that is that the beginning of the end when you start reaching out or is that so salvageable at that point salvageable if you work on it and often you need help because you're lost at that point and we don't educate people about relationships we teach them trigonometry in school but we have them forbid we text them about the
most important thing of all which is relationships so people get lost and they start to protect themselves and it gets worse and worse but if they come in to therapy with us people say you know can we heal this I say yes you can heal this but if you have to work at it it's not going to be easy you can heal it and we know how to do it and we've done research study on it we we know how to do it and we know that the effects
last three years down the road right it's but you have to be able to work on it healing an injury he's a special kind of hematite conversation focused around the injury you know you have to go look at that your negative dances that you
get caught in the diamond dialogues you have to understand how you got so distant from each other in the first place how there wasn't safety in connection in the relationship you have to be able to at least create some
safety and balance in the relationship you have to create some sort of security we call that's the end of stage one of EFT you de-escalate the negative patterns of disconnection and conflict in your relationship you create a certain safety and then you have to be able to go into risking and creating positive cycles of connection which is bonding situations and most couples need to do that around the injury so they go
back to the injury and what we see is that the really difficult thing is people try to apologize and in hold me tight I think I've got a list of ten apologies that don't work you know people say things like I'm sorry okay no that doesn't work people give long reasons why it happened now it doesn't work we've only seen one thing work and it's a form of home we take conversation what works is that I have to be able to really speak my pain
in a way that you that it impacts you that I have to come I can't fudge it and be vague I have to act be able to speak my pain in a way that moves you okay that you connect with and then you have to be able to help me understand how come my pain didn't matter at the time how come what was happening for you it's not about giving me reasons it's about being predictable again you have to be able to give me a coherent narrative of what
happened to you so I can start to tune into you and you can be predictable just not the enemy who where this can happen again any time right and then I turn and I I tell you my pain and you and my hurt in a very clear way and what I need from you to help that hurt I tell you how you can help with that hurt and you respond it's an antidote to the original injury you respond you and you respond to me I have to speak my pain I have to look
into your face and see that my pain hurts you this is not a cognitive conversation this is an emotional drama it has to be in the emotional channel or it doesn't work and I see that my pain hurts you and you express care and remorse for hurting me in a way that moves me and this shifts everything it's an antidote and it's it's not just about forgiveness forgiveness is the booby prize it's about forgiveness that leads
to reconciliation it's about forgiveness that turns into the willingness to risk and Trust again and it's a bonding conversation it's a bonding and it's highly emotional and when people have it they can forgive injuries they've can forgive all kinds of injuries but the only way I've ever seen it happening work and last is the way I've just described people try to stay in control and stay out of the emotion and heal them you can't you can't have a
cognitive conversation and heal them they they don't heal right people try to put them on the shelf for years and have a less close relationship and then somebody needs to take a risk and they come roaring out of the they come it's like you start to take a risk to create your closeness and your but your brain says wait a minute don't you remember this was damn dangerous last time you were vulnerable and people say never again
often this conversation starts with well we've talked about it a thousand times but basically you know now when I start thinking about risking with you and trusting and putting myself in your hands really really I'm gonna do that I promised myself never again you're gonna get the chance to hurt me like that again that's how the conversation starts never again and there's good reasons for that yeah if you understand the drama in a
relationship and certainly if you understands as a therapist what you understand you can shape if you understand love you can shape it if you understand the attachment drama you can shape it most of us see love as something random that comes along and hits you in the head and then disappears and we don't understand we don't have a concept in our society that you can shape the most important relationships in your life I mean just think about
that as a shift we caught we say you fall in love and then you fall out it comes you know it's like you don't have any control where as we see in therapy and even in our hold me tight we're and hold me tight weekend's all over the world it's our educational program and you know they blow us away the reason why therapist adore EFT is because it blows their mind it still blows my mind after 35 years right it blows their mind right
and you see these older couples for example who's I think couples community we have a pretty good relationship but you know we just thought we'd come to a homey type weekend just to little tune up and just for interest because you're an interesting speaker and I say Oh jolly good and then they come to me at the end of the weekend and say thank you so much we just reached a whole new level of closeness we've been married
for 35 years and we've never touched that thank you so much I didn't even know that I could feel this for my husband and so you can grow and shift and shape a relationship and you can repair it when it goes wrong if you understand the drama if you don't understand what we've just been we just dance blind we're just dancing climb we don't even know the music we're listening to we don't even understand our emotions you know it's time to for
this to end it's time for us to learn how to connect surely if we can go to the moon we can we have the key to love relationships now I do hope that we're gonna put it in the damn door and open the door you mentioned earlier that we create our own prisons a lot of people seem hesitant to tell their partner that they've had an affair in part because they don't want to hurt their part yes does that create a prison in the
relationship that affects the closeness yes is evil it's very hard because I think in images and I always think of it like you're holding the secret to your chest you're careful you're keeping you're making sure you don't tell this
secret you're keeping this part of you out of the relationship and that means that you're not fully engaged and your partner's going to feel that you know it's deception secrets are very toxic and love relationship accessibility
responsiveness and engagement ar.e are the variables in research that predict the safety of a bond any bond between any two people of any age right and accessibility is messed up by secrets you know I'm hiding basically I'm hiding from you and I'm being careful around you and there's a part of me that I don't want you to know and I'm always worried that you're gonna know it and I'm that takes energy glucose going to your brain to hide yeah
right and I'm always trying to manage how you see me and what you see I'm sorry then I can dance with you and listen to emotional music and tune in and let myself be carried away in the interaction with you of course I can't I'm holding this secret to my chest it's between you and me and people are afraid to speak secrets but they don't see the toxicity that comes from keeping them and how they're between them and their
partner they really are and in a relationship I'm I think I share with you an image where a man once said to me well I don't want to tell my I don't I finished the affair I don't want to tell my partner and she doesn't ever
need to know she's never going to know and I want to rebuild this relationship now so I'm not telling her and I said hmm you know let me share with you that's not that's what I call the bomb in the basement redecorating scheme he
said what do you mean I said well you you want me to help you rebuild your relationship house but you have a ticking bomb in the basement would you really try to rebuild your house with a ticking bomb right and he says I'm scared to tell my partner I said ah let's talk about that let's talk about that and we help people reveal secrets and my experience has been that's perfectly manageable what isn't perfectly manageable is what happens
when the bomb goes off and somebody finds out that you've been deceiving them see if I can have an intimate relation what I think is an intimate relationship with you and then I find out that you have been able to hold back from me and deceive me and that you are not who I think you are just think about how that messes the safety and the relationship it messes it okay its secrets are toxic and any secret not
necessarily just an affair like anything big that goes for any secrets you know we've we've worked with people who are you know into porn and they say you know I'm not telling my wife in porn so well you know what your wife doesn't know that you're in porn specifically but your wife knows that your sexuality has changed your wife knows that you're not emotionally with her your wife knows that you're hiding something your wife knows that you're
not really engaged your wife knows that something's going on so you know are you really being good at keep it what do you think keeping this secret is doing for your marriage you know and then they say well if I tell my wife that she'll despise me I'll say let's talk about that fear because we're all afraid of that but you know just think how she's gonna despise him if she [ __ ] when she finds out one year
later you know where did that money go excuse me you took our savings and you spent it all on porn and you've been hiding this from me for 18 months and telling me lies about where the money's gone you know like who are you and people say who are you but if I'm asking you who are you I'm not gonna turn around and fall into your arms and trust that you're gonna catch me you got to be kidding so you know people don't know that these things are
workable and so they hedge their bets and they try to hold out and hide you can't hide and dance with your partner love is of dance or relationships of dance you can the emotion is the music you know you're playing a certain kind of music when you're hiding that it just messes the dance you just you just can't hide and and be open and accessible and responsive is impossible so our hypothetical couple now has kids they've
gone through an affair they've healed mm-hmm there seems to be a cohort of people I would say between 35 and 45 that are vastly dissatisfied with their marriage or their situation at home oh I don't what's your question I don't find that
surprising at all we why not because we don't understand anything about relationships we don't people say monogamy doesn't work I said you we haven't given it a chance we don't know how to do it no need that but by
the way even though we don't know how to do it and we don't know how to do it well and we never get anyone to help us with that task and it's amazingly absorbing tasks the interesting thing is that most of us hang in and fight for it why because it's damned important and we know how important this bond is that's why so even when it isn't really working we'll hang on to it until we absolutely have to let go we've haven't known how
to do it people are vastly dissatisfied because they don't understand anything about the things I'm talking about so what should they do I mean that's sort of the question here is like if you're in this this this sort of grouping we'll say 35 to 45 you have kids maybe no kids but you're in a relationship and you've been in that relationship for maybe you know five years maybe 15 years how do you approach deciding that you want to
leave that relationship like what are the variables you think of it or what are the variables that you think about for like how do I help this relationship like how do you how do you go though let's start with how do you understand where you're at yeah and now we you have to the point here is I'm going to be very focused on my own work because because because I feel like that's why I know right so if you're seriously asking
me that I mean first of all you go and try to find out what's going on and I'm biased so the best way for you to do that is read hold me tight hold me tight is selling as well now as it did when it first came out it's generating all kinds
of relationship programs for different kinds of couples it's the result of years and years and years of research you know I don't think I'm being completely egg artistical by saying there's nothing out there like it I know
there isn't right and and that's because we've worked so hard to create it right so you have to understand you have to be motivated enough to understand what's going on if you find it so aversive you don't even want to look at what's going on then your relationships just going to continue to unravel right and you wake up one day and say I don't know who this person is there a stranger in my bed or I don't want to be
this person's partner and you don't even know how you got there but people are going and reading hold me tight they're going to relationship programs they're going we have our eyebrows talking to it coffee that we have a hold me tight online course now which we've just created and you know I mean we have research on our whole me tight groups by the way we have research on everything we do we have two studies and our homey
tight groups and the study the outcomes are really good okay so we're not the usual program that you see where it teaches you a few relationship skills and you pay a lot of money and you don't get anything out of it we're not in that game we make a difference to people right so you learn about relationships you go to you you do a hold me tight online course with your part you go to your partner first of all the same what's happening to us
it feels like we're disconnected I don't quite know where we are in this relationship I don't know where you are I don't know you know we used to have such great times together what's happening to us you have to be willing to take the risk to talk about it if you're just avoiding it and some people that's what they do with problems avoidance is a lousy strategy with emotional problems I'm not just talking about marriage I'm talking about
anything depression anxiety it's lousy strategy okay it's it's it sets you up you you never face the problem so you never have any new expect of experiences to change the problem and you get more and more sensitive to what it is you're
avoiding more and more vigilant it's just a it's it's a terrible strategy for any emotional problem okay a relationship problem but people believe the stuff out there that says oh well you know after a few years of marriage
this is the way it is you can't expect very much or our relationships monogamy is impossible all oh well you know people believe all this rubbish that's out there in the papers written by journalists right and so they feel pessimistic and they don't know what to do and they feel like failures and so they avoid they try to just stay superficial well that's that's just gonna end up with you know your relationships gonna just die
because it's not being fed at all so the start is to admit what and talk to your partner what's happening then go and get some relationship education if you don't want to do hold me tight or our programs there's raishin ships out there skill programs personally I don't think skill programs is the way to go because you can't use all these skill programs just for clarification is when you go see a couple certification skills the tools
that you need to you well they give you communication skills the trouble is with communication skills that you can't all the evidence all the research says you can't use them when you need them right I mean I'm pretty good all this stuff but when I'm having a fight with my partner I don't use all my skills it's my amygdala that's in control not my prefrontal cortex right so it's you know those skill sequences are kind of
in a different Channel right they're not we don't teach people skills now therapy would give them new experiences experiences are so powerful that they learn it whether they like it or not it's embedded in their nervous system in their muscle memory they don't have to practice it for homework if you understand it's a different level so you know to be willing to say oh well I'm going to learn about relationship so I'm
going to look at what's out there I'm going to find a program I'm going to torch I'm gonna work at it you know I'm gonna work at it I'm willing to look at it and explore it and work at it right and then that's the start and then to
find something that really helps you and if something like you know an educational program like hold me tight online or in your city there's one in nearly every city in North America there's if you're in San Francisco you
can go one-to-one nearly every week right so you know they're all over the place and you know if that doesn't work to go find an EFT therapist if go find a therapist and ask you this is the other thing the public are not educated about therapy go find a therapist and say to the therapist what model do you use what is the Reese behind it what are the outcomes you'll give me something I can read about it right don't just go to any couple
therapists because the fact of the matter is 70% of mental health professionals in North America say they see couples now because the demand is huge and most of those people have not been trained in couples therapy I hate to tell you how do you how do you pick a couple servers aside from sort of like what techniques do you use and is it evidence-based like what are the other variable you have to feel safe with that
person and I think that's a very key variable that people don't understand about therapy a good therapist knows how to help you feel safe mmm and heard and if you don't feel safe and heard then find another therapist a good EFT therapist knows how to the minute you talked to me on the phone the minute I taught I talked to you on the phone as a client my whole job is to make you feel safe why would you explore
different difficult places with me if you don't make if I don't help you feel safe it's counterintuitive but we're used to that you know with mental with professionals you know we don't even demand our doctors make us feel safe they don't even teach doctors how to talk to people you know who they teach to make people feel safe Air Canada pilots I don't know who teaches the Air Canada pilots but if you notice the Air Canada pilots and they
speak low and slow and it's about make they say hi folks we're just going through a little bumpy piece here it will only last a few more minutes I'm gonna take us down to know something feet 30,000 feet to try and give you a smooth ride and we'll be in Houston right on time this is your captain speaking what's he saying he's saying it's okay I'm your big daddy in the sky I'll take care of you you're safe it's a bit bumpy
don't worry about a listen to the way he does it dad listen to the music he's playing Dada Dada Dada Dada and the people will go oh okay and they book with Air Canada next time yeah because they feel safe on Air Canada
you should feel safe with your therapist you should feel safe with your doctor you should feel safe with your dentist as far as I'm concerned I have learned from my own work I if I go to a medical practitioner they're not listening to me
and they they wipe me out and they I'm not going because you're not going to listen to the information I'm giving you so you're not going to be a good practitioner even if you have read every book on the subject I'm not going I I have to trust you and people have to trust their therapists it seems fairly common that you people reach a point in a relationship where they they tune out so maybe they have that conversation
with their partner and they say you know I need these things to change to be in this relationship and then the partner or the partner sort of like starts to give them that and they feel sort of void about it they've given up well what
bonding science says is there's different stages of the emotional connection in a relationship and when disconnection hits and you don't feel safely to connect it to somebody you often you start to protest or you start
to say where are you where are you if that doesn't work you up the ante usually and you either up the ante or you start to space out because it's too painful right and if the spacing out or the upping the ante doesn't work for long enough it becomes really painful and aversive and the relationship becomes a source of danger rather than a source of safety and support and then people have different thresholds right
some people can numb that out for a long time right until some big crisis hits when it makes it obvious yeah then they can't ignore it anymore but retirements one of those by the way but you know they can numb it out for a long time but it often it gets to the place where they can't numb it out anymore they and what I get they can't numb out is they're alone they're alone in a relationship which drives people crazy they're in a relationship but
they're all that we can't deal with that paradox right our longings for connection are turned on you around all the time but you're not emotionally available drives me crazy it's a crazy making situation so then people tune into their emotions and they realize they've numbed out years ago and they've given up years ago and actually they're not willing to take any more risks they're not willing to invest they're not they've left they've
detached what should they do be honest about it they detached can you reattach at that point or are you is it too far gone well this is an interesting question and it comes up with therapists and therapists never want to hear my answer no you can't read our relationships are on a live organism they're a living relational system and you know there's a certain point where you know you can't breathe life into it so let's back up
for one second then what are the warning signs that you're approaching that so that if anybody's listening before they reach this detachment where you you can't reconnect what are the trigger like what are the flares that they should be watching and you you've you can't find you're longing for your partner when you've stopped being upset or agitated by the fact that your partner isn't available to you when you've turned away to other things in
your life for support and caring when you know you know when you don't feel you're starting to lose that need to emotionally connect with them when you realize that when you think about them you don't get any response from your nervous system you don't get any emotional comfort you stopped looking to them for support and comfort and you've stopped putting them into that in important place in your life where they
matter more than anybody else and you realize that you're starting to withdraw and shut down and you know and people have been protesting a long time they start to burn out that's what that's the way I see it they where are you where are you where are you where are you after a few years it's like I can't bear this anymore I get depressed I go into despair and then I give up and actually giving up feels like a relief because
I'm exhausted and I'm burnt out with saying are you going to touch me are you and I and then they get burned and there's a if they come in right when they're burned out we work with them and they can start to re-engage but it's it
takes time and the other partner has to work at it right but there's a certain point where they won't re-engage it's like you your emotions have a reality they have a structure and there's a certain point where you you just won't
invest you can still be friends you can still care about the person but you're not going to do give this investment you're not going to risk in the way you have right there's just no motivation for it it's like you've gone into detachment and you can't turn around walk and walk back if you look at long-term if you look at the relationship between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton you could say here that they they divorced and they remarried
and they divorced and people say oh there you are you see can't you reattach they were never unattached they the problem with that relationship was they were had a third person in the relationship all the time it was called alcohol and Richard Burton was completely but he was a Colt Welsh coal miners son and he was completely addicted to alcohol and it was a competing attachment he kept choosing alcohol over Liz and their relationship
would hit a wall and they'd fight to get it back and their relationship would hit a wall and they'd separate but the evidence is if you read the book on their relationship they never really separated in fact apparently it says in the book that Richard Burton was married to somebody else and in the few days before he died he wrote Liz a letter and he said could I please come home now and that when she died after numerous
husband's she asked to be buried next to him her family didn't respect that wish but that couple could not be together because they wounded each other so much a lot of it was that there was a third being in and they could not separate either that's a very particular kind of relation they never detached they couldn't detach and they couldn't stay together right but for most people who aren't Liz Taylor and Richard Burton you know they
do detach after a while and you don't go back you just don't you you find someone else to invest in where you can have that longing and that hope one of the byproducts I think of being divorced is I have a lot of friends come and openly talk to me about their relationships yes and their struggles and it's really interesting that one common theme that sort of emerges amongst people is it's too good to leave but not good enough to
stay then my response to that would be if it's too good to leave then turn around and walk into it and talk to your partner and go do something about it you can shape it you can heal it go do something about it find out what's blocking it find out what's getting wrong look at the way you dance together look at the dance between the two of you don't get into the blame game that's a waste of time your fault no it's your fault you know what here's
where we are it's the way you yes here's where we are this is how our dance ends up we are both dancing here's where we are let's look at the dance right let's understand it's the dance recording that's destroying our feelings for each other it's not because you're bad or I'm bad or nobody has to be the bad guy here most of us are dancing a dance that we don't understand that nobody's helped us understand and we don't know how to move
in the dance particularly at key moments of vulnerability we don't know how to do it so we do it all wrong that's right so you know but but if we love each other interesting piece of research and EFT there was one study that looked to
predictors of success in EFT and everyone I know if you asked every couple therapists including some researchers what's the best predictor of web couples are at the end of couple therapy they tell you how distress they
are when they come in that's not truly FT the research said it doesn't matter how distressed you're on when you come in if you're still invested if you're still willing to work it matters how engaged you get in working on your relationship if you're willing to work on it and you seek out somebody who can really help you a relationship consultant because that's what an EFT therapist is and you read hold me tight you can work on your
relationship you can't heal every relationship but we have a damn good record and if you're not willing to work on it I would imagine that there's an obligation and decency to acknowledge that to your partner and I say so you're not doing your we don't want to hurt our partner but you're not doing your prana any favors by not showing up in the relationship and then trying to hide the fact that you've actually left you're
really not doing your partner any favors you know it's gonna hurt them either way they're hurting anyway because they know you're not engaged so whether you're gonna hurt them is irrelevant they're a negative relationship they're hurting anyway and you're not helping them by by by fudging it right if you can't show up in the relationship and you respect your partner you tell them and the other two major transitions that sort of seem to
happen our kids move out empty nest and we retire can you walk me through Heather's effect empty nest is a really interesting one and the divorce rates have gone up with for that group and it's interesting because the divorce is usually initiated by the woman it seems I think that's a very interesting one because as one of my people in the hold me tight tapes that I showin hold me tight group said lovely lady I said what is Dartz that
you and your husband a court in she said I call it the nothing I said you call it the nothing she's just I call it the nothing because basically we always have problems in our relationship we could never really talk to each other very well but we had good sex and we loved our children and we were wonderful parents and we had this joint project called our children and our children we spent all time and energy in our
children and this was a connection for us and then our last daughter went away to college and we found that we had nothing my husband had developed a reptile dysfunction something we had nothing and so then I tried to I would I would try to talk to him about it and I'm sure and I'm not as fast as him and I'm not as clever as him and I don't have the words and he talks very fast and it overwhelms me so I tried to talk about it and we it
wouldn't work and so I bang things around in the kitchen and he'd come upstairs from his office and he'd say to me what's wrong and I'd say nothing nothing and he'd say why would you never talk to me and she'd say no no really it's nothing and [ __ ] and then he'd turn around and walk away from me listen it's about separation walk away from me and I'd say to myself we have nothing I'm alone we have nothing so I call our cycle and the
place we're caught in than nothing I said wow you know that's pretty amazing that and that lady shifts in just the hold me tight educational program she shifts you wouldn't recognize her a few conversations later she's she said all this in a very shy hesitant voice I'm not doing it the way she did it okay she turns up a few sessions later like she's she's totally different she feels like her she understands her emotions she can
express them she can tell him to slow down she can ask for what she needs she ships she shifts her sense of self and how she can dance with her partner but you know that's where people go and sometimes it hijacks them it's like
they're focusing on oh well we still make the oven oh well you know I like being his wife and oh well we have our children and then suddenly the children are gone we don't know how to have conversations we're not used to spending
any time together oh we have conversations and suddenly we don't know how to torture we don't really feel closer I don't really desire you oh well wait a minute I feel closer to my sister Oh what happened no and then it really matters what you do next do you turn and deal with it with your partner or do you try and fudge it and you the best you do when you fudge it is you live together as strangers for the rest of your lives
that's very bad for you mentally and physically it's bad for your physical health apart for anything else I have this theory it's not based on any science whatsoever just anecdotal evidence on the school ground which is
rings seem to come off at milestones of Independence for kids as the kids become more independent so the kids first go to school that's like the first wave of sort of wedding rings that come off then the kids hit grade seven and that's
another sort of like wave rings coming up look at my theory and please like feel free to like critique this the hilt says basically you're attached to somebody you have children everything in the relationship becomes about the children yeah so it becomes almost transactional you lose touch of the bond nation with the person yeah and then the kids get more independent and then all of a sudden you have more time together
and you start talking and you realize like there's nothing there that's right and you haven't maintained that connection or perhaps you've even lost it and you can't rekindle it that's right I think that does happen and you know I think what you said is interesting which is that in a way you've been avoiding each other for years because you focused on the task of parenting yeah and you haven't paid attention to your relationship
relationships are live things they're live moving organisms and they're like every other live thing if you starve them of attention and ignore them and leave them on the shelf for years then you turn around try to pick them off the show well I'm sorry but they've shriveled and died yeah and so my uncle I just she was an interesting story when my ex and I got divorced and we told people most people were really surprised
and because from the outside looking in we had this great sort of relationship at the inside out I mean we'd be in couples therapy for a while and things weren't great and then I told everybody in my uncle I would like the hundred people I told he was the only person who said oh I saw that coming and I said really that's fascinating Chrissy because everybody else I've told is yes you know say and he said I have this theory about
relationships that I can predict a couple's happiness together in their bond he didn't use the word bond I use it in the context of this conversation and he said well here's what happened he's like you come over to my house and
we we used to go over to my uncle's house quite often he's like the first time you know you don't talk together you don't ask each other any opinions I mean you're talking but it's all transactional it's all like who's gonna
change the diaper he's gonna take the kid here he's gonna do that he's gonna do this in content and he's like the first time that happens I kind of think nothing of it but he's like the second third fourth fifth time you come to my house four or five times and you've done nothing but that he's like I think that there's no connection there there's nothing left between you it's sort of that's and he was like that's why I
didn't surprise me and ever since then it's really interesting because I've used this heuristic with my friends and so I will approach my friends and I'll be like what's going on in your relationship and some of my guy friends are like oh nothing and I'll be like no what's going on in your relationship and then they'll be like what do you know and I'll be like I don't know anything but I know something's up and they'll be
like how do you know something's up and I'll be like well I've seen you guys together a few times and it's this sort of thing that leads me to believe that everything's not okay am i right and then they'll often open up about some of the struggles in that relationship and I think part of the issue is people or maybe therapists certainly this is true they get fixated on conflicts and how conflict is aversive and distance slips
by them yeah and they start to normalize it and actually from an attachment point of view it's distance that's the virus its disconnection yes but we all get caught and confident people say so would you have a happy relationship fight oh I hear that all if we don't find you yeah I know but do you have your relationship it's not the same you know well it's like well we can peacefully lift and the tricky part is that for some of us depending on how
we've grown up you know my parents fought to the death constantly yeah mine too and I all I knew was I did I remember saying to my granny whatever that is I'm not doing it right I'm not I'm not doing that right and and so you know you see I saw the conflict right and we focus on conflict and therapists focus on conflict teach you how to fight fair and fighting fair is rubbish okay it's like it's irrelevant it's you know it's so you
know and we don't look at what's going on underneath which is lack of emotional connection you know there's incredible distance in a relationship that's designed for closeness and connection and sharing and we're not very good and we don't know what to do with that we don't know what to do with which some of us don't even know how to begin an accessible your open responsive conversation we don't know how to begin it so we don't if you're in a
relationship with somebody and you have kids how much of a priority should that relationship with your spouse be should it be over the kids I don't know about over you what I say to people is the very best thing you can do for your kids is create a safe parental Alliance is share with each other parenting's hard work especially if you can do it well difficult to do it alone almost impossible to do if you're fighting with your partner you're in a
danger zone so you know the best thing you can do for your kids is have a good relationship and have a relationship we support each other as parents that's the very best thing you can do so from my point of view it's a real mistake and often people are avoiding their relationship by turning to the kids though and it's the safe place for them to interact they can interact as parents right but but you know in the end your
kids are again they're gonna get it grow up and leave one day and you know parent is a good parenting czar moving target I mean my experience of being a parent is I just figure out how to do it and then my kid would change yeah all I knew how to parent my someone he was a delicious little boy I knew it was so easy it was easy and then suddenly who is this pompous entitled adolescent I don't like him I like my God he's talking to me like I'm his
servant and I'm what happened to my wonderful cuddly little son well he's changed so you know and now he totally ticks me off you're so much oh all right like this is a different thing so it helped me tremendously to go to be able to go to my husband and say I don't want to empathize with him I want to kill him like you know oh he's the most outrageous I've met you who does he think he is and like my husband would
say yep yep sweetie that's a hard one and yeah I know and I see you and I know how hard you're trying and yeah I get mad too with him and yeah and well I said well you're a guy what's happening with him and he said oh well you know he's just changed friends at school he's in a new group and you know the friends and his new group are all cool and he's he's if you watch him he's doing the cool thing he's mr. cool you know and
what's cool is to tell your parents how boring and old fashioned and weird they are and would could you please and could they also please buy your car he would join those two things repeat he didn't say anything wrong by the way
oh my god me a car you wouldn't be the minute exactly and by the way all my friends didn't you see that my best friend her mother bought her a car well it's really interesting I'm not buying you a car well then you're the worst
pair yeah it's it's hard to be a parent then if you have us the support it really matters but I must say I think it's a a tricky trap to get into by always putting your children first and always your children the best thing you can give your children is parents who know how to support each other and stand together and help each other not only that but you give your two you give your children even something more valuable by doing
that you give your children a vision of what a good relationship looks like you can that King map guide them for the rest of their lives yeah I like that a lot the last phase that I want to sort of talk about is retirement but I'm gonna kick this off of the story about my parents hopefully they're not listening but when they retire that's a huge transition they suddenly went from spending maybe four or five hours a day
together to spending a ton of time together yes and at least with my parents their experience lasted a bit three weeks before they went and got jobs part-time jobs because they were driving each other insane and they sort of like learn to deal yes but that's a huge transition from a couple's point of view so the kids it is a huge transition and I think it's personally I think it's an issue and maybe this is because I
have personal things here you know I'm at the point in my life where people could ask him if I'm going to retire and I feel like poking them in the eye you know it really annoys me okay because I am what I do I love what I do
and I hope that I'm going to be doing what I do on the day before I die and retirement from my point of view is like it's asking me you know when am I going to give up doing this thing that really matters to me it's like buzz off it
really it really annoys me but I think that's a whole issue with retirement we our lifespan is changing we're no longer old at 65 and our expectations are changing and I think we need to look at the whole idea of retirement we might stop what we've been doing for years to make money I don't do what I do to make money I'm very privileged I do what I do out of passion right and I'm privileged there but we might stop what we do to
make money but I think we need a different model of growing old I think we need a different model of aging and we need be able to say if you're an intelligent vibrant human being what are you doing deciding to play golf every day at the age of 65 are you kidding like you've got something to contribute you've you've learned all kinds of skills you've you know like no society needs you if you don't like what you've
been doing to make money find something you're good at and contribute and be out there in the world you know and so I'm with your parents I think you know you you can't get every single thing you need from a relationship you don't have anything to bring into the relationship right it's like I think that's important I think that's more of a model about retirement than it is about than it is about marriage but yeah it's about transitions and if
people have a secure bond they can manage those transitions because they're open and they can look at them together when they don't have a secure bond those transitions exacerbate all the distance butterflies distance and the Air Act's yeah yeah is there any any advice you have for couples to talk to their kids though relationships like other than modeling I don't think it's what you talked to him about that matters I think
what you show them hmm it's what you show that how you treat them and what you show them with your partner that's what impacts kids you can talk to them for hours it doesn't make it doesn't it doesn't matter it's how you treat them whether you help them understand bonding from the way you treat them whether you help them understand their emotions or teach them that their emotions are to be hidden and not acceptable and something they're
just supposed to get over and it's how you show them how to relate you know I mean my kids have seen me fight with my husband and I make up I think that's very important I think my kids some people say oh he was they were fine well you're right it's not a good idea to have huge conflicts all the time in front of your kids indeed the research is that's not good for them it freaks them out but you know I feel like
there's something very healthy about my kids have seen me and my husband really disagree and challenge each other and then they see us come back together and company resolve it yes and I think that Matt well I know my son with his partner and I know that it's impacted him from watching us have it because you know he doesn't catastrophize your when when something goes wrong in his relationship it impacts him but he he it's work he's
it's workable he's seen that it's workable right that that's really important it's or any other relationship sort of advice that you want to give before we wrap this up for a long time I know no I just want people to know that there is a science of love that science has changed our world in so many ways you know there's a science of how to take care of your teeth there's a science of you know almost everything
these days you know there's a science of love and relationships too and I want people to know it exists and I want people to know the promise of it and it's out there but it's it's not something that anybody's making a huge
amount of money from so it's not marketed on front of the New York Times or in the magazines and things that are marketed big distractions like porn the porn industry isn't interested in my message you know because I say that you
know Paul's just a trap it's going down the rabbit hole it's not gonna meet your needs in the end you know it's it's right it's making somebody so this isn't making this isn't highly marketable from the point of view of capitalism so it's a hard message to get out in some ways one lady from the New York Times told me I said would you please tell me why it isn't why you put this rubbish all over the New York Times about relationship
sensational rubbish could you please tell me why you don't think of putting all over your paper we've cracked the code of love we know how to do this now we need to educate everybody about it this is amazing and she said there's a long silence and basically she said well it's not sensational enough I said are you joking and then she said well I people think it's just common sense and I said yeah it's like common sense like everyone
understands gravity we understand it on the level of stuff falls down nobody you know and but we now understanding gravity where would we be we wouldn't understand anything like are you kidding me you what I felt like saying was it's because you have a lousy paper but I didn't I said I said I felt like saying it's because you're not community orientated but I didn't I just said well there you go you know like I don't want to write this
stupid article you want me to write because it's a waste of time but you know it's people need to know you can shape your love relationships relationships make sense there's a deep logic behind our emotions if this is about biology mm-hmm okay there's a deep logic behind our emotions there's a deep logic behind our needs what you understand you can shape you can shape relationships and I want people to know that and I will ideally before I die I
would like relationship education to be the Normans in Canadian schools I'd like the Prime Minister of Canada hope he's listening to ask me if I would freely donate my online homey type program to the government so they could make it available to everyone in cat if that happened I would fall on the floor and I don't know what I do but like we have to tell people about this this is ridiculous we'll see if we can make that
happen I think he's a bit busy I think he's rather concerned you know but but you know it's like the promise of this is so huge it takes my own breath away in my work and that's why I'm still passionate about it and people all over the world are passionate about it you know we we train 3,000 mental health professionals a year in North America and our four-day trainings we we're in all the universities we are still doing research
we're in we're in we have 70 centers all around the world we're pedaling as hard as we can to tell people about this it has promise for mental health it has promised for physical health it has promised for our families for our relationships all over to tell millions of people so for you well I'm glad because that's why I'm talk to you because this is something that people everybody needs to know about that just on the level of hey you know
what we could create more secure families for our kids Wow even if you just stop there are you kidding yeah I think that's a great place to end this up thank you so much see this been phenomenal thank you for traveling right across Canada to sit and talk with me hey guys this is Shane again just a few more things before we wrap up you can find show notes at Furnham street vlog comm slash podcast that's f AR n a.m. st AR ee t BL o g
calm slash podcast you can also find information that are on how to get a transcript and if you'd like to receive a weekly email from me filled with all sorts of brain food go to Furnham Street blog comm slash newsletter this is all the good stuff I found on the web that week that I've read and shared with close friends books I'm reading and so much more thank you for listening [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you