Today, I would like to summarize the key points from a wonderful article I read in the NYT entitled “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage” by Amy Sutherland. The piece is about what Sutherland learned about training techniques by observing professional exotic animal trainers – and how she then applied those techniques to her husband. It is one of the most-emailed NYT articles ever, and eventually led to a book which was published in February 2008. ...
There are certain well-documented patterns that can play out between partners in a long-term relationships. The pursuer-distancer dynamic is a particularly toxic one – in a longitudinal study of 1,400 divorced individuals over 30 years, psychology professor E. Mavis Hetherington found that couples who adopted this pattern were at the highest risk for divorce. The pattern is a psychological dance, oftentimes unconscious, between two partners in a relationship — one partner (the pursuer) who pursues the other (the distancer) in an effort to form closeness. If unresolved, this pattern can escalate into a Bad Idea Dominos sequence of increasingly desperate attempts to re-connect. I believe understanding the pursuer-distancer dynamic is not just helpful to understanding human relationships, but also that it can serve as a kind of early-detection system of relational distress. ...
During the course of a day, partners make requests for connection, what psychologist and mathematician John Gottman of the Gottman Institute calls bids. A bid is any attempt from one partner to another for attention, affirmation, affection, or any other positive connection. They can come in all forms – verbal, non-verbal, physical, sexual, intellectual, humorous, serious, in the form of a question or statement or comment. Non-verbal bids can include affectionate touching (a squeeze), facial expressions (sticking out your tongue), playful touching (tickling), affiliating gestures (opening a door), and vocalizing (giggling). ...
The scientist — research-driven (primary or meta-analyses), with publications in peer-reviewed journals e.g. Gottman academic papers, Eli Finkel, Joanne Davila. They invariably venture into pop texts which build (and at times hyperbolize) on results from their scientific studies. The specialist — sample-driven, with training in a relevant field layered with insights from professional experience working with different couples, e.g. Esther Perel, Stan Tatkin. Be mindful of selection bias in the context of general conclusions, since their samples are skewed (only a certain type of couple can afford to go to a world-renowned psychiatrist). ...
In my time as a digital nomad staying at co-living spaces around the world, there was one that stood out in terms of its ability to create a strong sense of community, even in an inherently diverse and transient demographic: Sun and Co. in Javea, Spain. One of the lynchpins of the Sun and Co. community building process was the weekly family meeting. Every Monday evening, the community organizers would lead an hour-long roundtable with all the residents where they introduce new people in the house, figure out the weekly agenda for the community, and share anything that’s emergent for those staying there that week. It’s a time to reflect, share, contribute, and receive. ...
During shelter-in-place, time boundaries have melted into each other. It’s difficult to differentiate between days, both as we’re going through them and when we’re looking back on them. Given that the days don’t have the structure that changing locations imposed – going into the office, heading to the gym, going out for coffee – I’ve realized that sometimesIe don’t get the individual time that I crave as an introvert. Moreover, I wasn’t sure about how to communicate that to my partner without sounding standoffish. ...
In the age of online dating, the first in-person date can be an exciting early milestone — you double opted-in on the swipe app of your choice, managed to carry on an in-app chat without forgetting about each other, and successfully navigated the scheduling gauntlet. Yet many people dial it in when it comes to planning the date, opting for a meet and greet at a neighborhood coffee shop or (even worse) the tired happy hour ritual. However, a little bit of forethought can set the stage for a rich, mutually enjoyable, and altogether more connective experience. Below are some science-backed principles to keep in mind when planning the first date. ...
So you’ve matched with a promising guy or gal, and you’ve shared some witty banter on the in-app chat. What’s next? I recommend that my clients schedule a screening phone call. Yes, a phone call.1 This may sound old-school (and tends to particularly weird out millennials), but hear me out. There are a few advantages to doing this before setting up an in-person date: It’s a synchronous communication format with very low overhead. You don’t have the lag of texting, and you also don’t have the scheduling and primping overhead of meeting IRL. The level of investment is somewhere between messaging and getting together, so it’s a nice intermediate step. A corollary is that the downside risk is low — if the chemistry or alignment isn’t there, you can get out in a few minutes. How many dates have you had where it was obvious within the first few words that it wasn’t a good match, but you felt obligated to sit through it for a while anyway? Not so with a phone call! You can assess non-visual cues that can indicate whether or not you have a good connection — e.g. do they have a pleasing vocal tone, are they able to hold a good conversational cadence without talking over you, do they have a compatible sense of humor? It provides enough distance where you feel safe opening up, yet close enough that you get a sense of building rapport and connection. This means that you can figure out if someone’s willing to “show up” to the conversation. Can they have a meaningful dialogue? Are they comfortable getting vulnerable? Before jumping on a call, there is some homework to do first. Part of creating a successful phone screen is coming up with an idea of what the guiding questions for the conversation are. A good phone screen question has two key characteristics: ...
When I got married, it would’ve been helpful to have a blueprint of how other couples structured their finances. The below system is a possible way of doing it, using three pools — one joint and two individual. The joint pool consists of at least three accounts — savings, checking, and investment accounts. The individual pool for each spouse consists of at least a checking account per individual. With these accounts in place, income is allocated to accounts as follows: ...
When my ex-wife and I divorced, sorting out the financial side was the biggest logistical headache that we had. Not wanting to deal with this overhead in the midst of the emotional challenges we were facing meant that we put off formalizing our divorce for a long time. Taking just two simple steps before tying the knot would have made our lives significantly easier. The first step is to know the separation rules for your state as they pertain to finances. Notably, you may not have realized that everybody has a prenuptial agreement (a “prenup”). If you and your partner haven’t crafted your own, you get the state default version. There are two main schemes for dividing assets and liabilities between you and your spouse: community property and equitable distribution. ...