Lori Gottlieb
Appearances
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We couldn't control the situation with our parents when we were growing up. And now we think, again, this is completely outside of our awareness. I'm going to win this time. I'm going to master this. I'm going to get love from that kind of person. And it doesn't work out.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There is a word for it. It's called help rejecting complainers.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So a help rejecting complainer is a person who is always telling you, you know, this went wrong and it was somebody else's fault. And they're seemingly coming to you for advice or guidance. And no matter what you say, like, how about this? Or have you tried this? Or have you thought about this? No, that won't work because no, I've tried that. That's not going to help.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
No, because people are like this and that won't help. So they don't actually want help. It serves them in some way to complain and be the victim and be wronged. And so it's almost like, you know, that makes them feel better. They don't want to look at themselves. They don't want to look at their role in things.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So beware of help-rejecting complainers because they're always going to come to you and you're going to at first feel bad for them. You're going to be like, wow, they've really had a hard time. Wow, you know, I wonder if I could help them this way. And then you start to realize they don't want help. They don't want to be helped.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They will reject any help that comes their way because if they get help, they can't complain anymore.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I think that you really want to make sure that you are choosing someone for healthy reasons and not because there's some unfinished business that you're trying to work out with this person who is not going to meet your needs.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think that we are wired to want to love and be loved, whatever that means. There's all kinds of love. There's all kinds of ways to love. I think that people don't know how to love and be loved if they haven't seen it. So generally you learn that because you've had it modeled for you or if you haven't had it modeled for you, you by trial and error start to learn these things.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Maybe you go to therapy and you learn more about it. But I think no matter what people come to therapy for, no matter what we call the presenting problem, you know, they're coming because. whatever they want to say it is, deep down, something got kind of ruptured in the love or being loved area of their life. And really that's the core of it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And we have to solve that problem so that the problem they came in for, you know, it's kind of like you're dealing with content, which is like, here's the problem and process, which is what's going on underneath. And if we can solve the process, then you solve content in multiple areas of your life. It's not just this one problem that you came in with.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But generally, if you learn at the core what the issue is that gets in the kind of love or be loved area, you learn how to navigate through the world differently in your professional life, in your romantic life, in your platonic friendship life, in your family life. So it's not just therapy isn't just about solving like that one discrete problem. Sometimes it is.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But many times it's about if we can get to the deeper process issue, then you will solve so many different problems simultaneously.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. So most of us, all of us, myself included, you, all of us, we're unreliable narrators because we're only telling the story through – our own lens. And so it's really important for people to kind of be expansive about what the story might be about themselves. Like someone might have a story, I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone, or nothing will ever work out for me.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That's their story that they're carrying around from childhood or from some experience that they had in life. And they don't realize that they're carrying that story around. So everything that they experience is viewed through that lens.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so, of course, they're not finding, you know, they're not finding people they trust because their whole worldview is I can't trust anyone, even though the person might be trustworthy or they feel unlovable. So, of course, they can't take in the love that they're getting because, again, what are they paying attention to? This predominant storyline. So they need to rewrite the story.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I created this workbook that's like a step-by-step guide. I'm not sort of doing this to plug the workbook. I'm saying it's a very methodical process. You have to break down the story. And my background is that, you know, I come from a writing background. So I feel like I'm almost like an editor in the therapy room when people come in and they bring this story.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And my job is to help them edit the story so that this faulty narrative that was never true or someone – you know, whoever told them that story, whether they explicitly said you're not lovable or showed them through their actions that they then felt not lovable – That story was told by another narrator.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So that narrator was unreliable, gave you this story that now you take as gospel and you move through life with that story. So let's examine that story. And can we look for examples of counter examples of when that story is not true? Because generally, there are stories of you being lovable. There are stories of people being trustworthy. There are stories of things working out for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So we have to really rewrite those narratives and say, you know, what is true and what is an artifact of somebody else's story that we're carrying around? And why are we like writing the next chapter with somebody else's narrative that we never owned anyway?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, right. And again, the story, think about like how much we tell stories about ourselves and other people. That example I gave you earlier about the person who said, well, he doesn't prioritize me because he comes late and work is more important to him. And in fact, he was prioritizing her. So we tell all kinds of stories and we make meaning of interactions with people.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And generally, we don't have enough information and we need to say, can we expand this story? What would that story look like if I got curious? and ask more about it. Or even just things that happen in our own lives. Can I examine that story for myself? Is that the story I want to tell myself about that experience that didn't go the way I wanted? Or can I look at it a different way?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like, am I a failure or am I actually growing? You can look at the same story the same way. I'm a failure. That didn't work out. Or, oh, that's really interesting. I learned something really important and I'm really a courageous person for trying that and now I learned something. totally different experiences of the same event.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think sometimes the way we get to that story in the moment is to look at our senses. So we have five senses. We don't tend to pay much attention to them. We just think through everything. So can you say in a moment, right, like even about your partner, when you're upset with your partner, can you say like with each sense, like here's one thing I see about my partner that I really like.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
even though I'm upset about something they just did, right? Here's something I hear. I like the tone of their voice or I like the way they laugh. You know, I like the way they smell. You know, whatever it is, you know, I like the way you can just reach out. By the way, touch is so important.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
What I have couples do sometimes when things are getting a little bit escalated in the therapy room is I'll say, can you take each other's hands right And it's the last thing they want to do in that moment. So can you just take each other's hands? Calmness, right? Their nervous system is calming down. And all of a sudden they feel, oh, yeah, I forgot what that touch feels like.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And they feel connected now. So can we use our other senses sometimes when we get really in our head? and use it to kind of expand the story and connect. And whether it's connecting with yourself, sometimes, you know, with anxiety, we do that, you know, something I can see, hear, taste, touch, smell. We can do that with a partner too.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
when my son was in preschool, there was a shirt that girls would wear, little preschool girls, and it said, boys are stupid, let's throw rocks at them. And it was supposed to be somehow girl power, empowering, but you don't empower by putting down another group, right? You lift up, but you don't bring down. And my son was so confused by that. I remember he was like, Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think. That's it. That's it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That is absolutely correct. And I think it's so interesting because I think that people think that having one parent that gave you what you needed is protective. And in some ways it is, but the thing that hurts is the thing that gets the most attention inside of our bodies. So we don't necessarily think it, but we felt it. We internalized it. It lives inside of us.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'm going to go to the bathroom,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. What's that? That's it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. this is going to be the expected response and you get something completely different. They can't understand why a friend or a family member or a coworker or whatever would do or say or think something. I think at the end of the day, people really know what the answer to the question is, but they want permission. So many times people say like, what do you think about this?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so, yes, having a good parent, one of the two, if you have two parents, one of the two is important. But it's interesting that it's not like we seek out the person that's like the good parent always. Sometimes, again, because we're trying to work something out, we seek out someone like the parent who really hurt us.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, I mean, I think that's where therapy is really helpful. I think that's where, you know, people are like, well, what is therapy really for? And I think it's really about what are the things that are outside of your awareness but that are sort of driving the car?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or I really want to do this, but the people in my family think this. And so they're almost asking for permission that it's okay to want something. It's okay. We are so cautious about desire in our culture that sometimes we think that if I have a desire, it's indulgent as opposed to you should, you know, have desires, live a big life.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I always say to people, when you're making a decision, choose the bigger life. That's how you make the decision. And I heard that somewhere. It's not mine originally. But I think it's so true that, you know, it's okay to have these desires. But then we get these messages from our culture or our friend group or our families that, no, no, no, it's not okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so a lot of people want permission that it's OK that you don't want to go to medical school. It's OK. You know, it's OK that you don't want to have children. That's OK. You know, so I think sometimes people want permission. But I think what they're really I think most of the letters are about. I'm having trouble relating and I don't know if I'm crazy, they're crazy, what's happening.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So it's like we think we're the driver of our own car, but often, like, someone else is driving the car and we don't realize it and we think, why does this keep happening? Or, you know, what is happening in my life that I'm not getting what I want in, you know, whatever dimension it is, whether it's professionally or personally?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so they need sort of that person who's going to zoom out and see it from a more objective place and help them to see, again, going back to narrative, both sides of the narrative. So I'm not just in my column. I don't just say, here's what you should do. I do do that. But I first say, I want you to have some context around this. So here's how you're thinking about it. And that's understandable.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Here's the other side of the story that you're not really paying attention to. Now that you have this wider lens, here's how I think this might be managed.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or they're waiting for something. Like, I will buy a house when? I will look for a partner when? As if there are these prerequisites that need to happen because that's the conventional view of the order in which you should live your life. I won't buy a house until I'm married as opposed to why? Why can't you buy a house that you like if you have the money to do that, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Why do you have to wait for marriage for that? Or I won't look for a partner until I have this kind of job. You know, that you have to have all these little pieces in this order and there are so many different ways to live your life. And sometimes, by the way, you might want to live your life in that conventional order, but it just doesn't work out that way for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So you might have to switch up the order and that's okay.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. And I think that when we talk about – we're not talking about hedonism. We're talking about reflecting on what will make a meaningful, purposeful life for you and then being very intentional about going after that goal.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so often it's because there's some force that you are acting out that you don't even realize. And I think the role of therapy is to kind of hold up a mirror to people and help them to see something about themselves that they haven't been willing or able to see.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for this conversation. I love having these longer conversations and really exploring what it means to be human.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think it's about the familiarity that there's something so visceral about this feels like childhood. And even if childhood was not optimal or even miserable, it still feels familiar. And humans in general are very afraid of uncertainty. They're very afraid of the unfamiliar.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I remember when I was in therapy, my therapist said to me, you know, you remind me of this cartoon, and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open. No bars, right? So why do we stay in this prison? Why don't we walk – why don't we even see that it's open? And why don't we walk around the bars?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Usually it's something like, tell me what's going on. Tell me why you're here. Tell me what made you decide to come in.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And it's because with freedom comes responsibility and uncertainty. We don't know what's – we know what it's like to be in prison. That's been our experience. So that feels comfortable even though we say we desperately want to get out. And then if we choose the uncertain path, we're responsible for our lives now. We can't blame it on mom or dad or this situation or that situation.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm not saying those situations weren't impactful. Of course they were. But we have choices as an adult. We have freedom as an adult that we didn't have as a child. And sometimes it's really hard for us to say – I'm going to have to be responsible for my life, that's terrifying because we feel like we don't have the tools to do that. We feel like, again, the uncertainty.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We'd rather have the certainty of like I know what it's like in prison. At least I know what that's like and I know the devil you know. And that's not – again, that's outside of our awareness.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
step into a path of potential success right it makes no sense right i mean and so i pass this along we'll see what he does with it with it with that knowledge yes it's kind of like the the misery of uncertainty the certainty of misery is sometimes more palatable to people than the misery of uncertainty so you can be certain that you're going to stay miserable if you stay in jail
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Everything. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so interesting because sometimes people will say I'm here because of and they'll talk about something very difficult, but they're smiling through it. You know, I think it's very nerve wracking to come in and see a therapist and you don't know this person and you're about to share some very personal information that maybe you haven't told anyone. in this way.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
but the misery of uncertainty is worse. So it's really interesting that people will make that trade off. And the other thing about this attraction question that you're asking about, it's like I had this therapy client and she would pick people who were exactly like one or both of her parents and she would be so attracted to those guys.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
She would always go for them and she'd say, men are terrible, guys are terrible. It's like, no, no, no, the men you're choosing
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. So that's the thing. She was working out this way of she hadn't separated yet from her childhood. So she was trying to kind of reenact her childhood, reenact her childhood with these men. And she didn't realize she was doing that. She'd just be like, oh, I'm so attracted to this person or things like, you know, I just I like this guy so much.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I don't know why he doesn't call when he says he will. Right. And it's like, well, who is that like? Who does that remind you of? When have you felt that before that? Like, I never know where I stand. with this parent, with this boyfriend. And then the people who were really reliable, who, by the way, it wasn't about their physical traits. Like these men were all physically attractive.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It was, she felt no sort of, again, that word chemistry because there's something very threatening about like, oh, there's no friction. It's a frictionless thing where he says he's going to call and he does. He's reliable. He does what he says he's going to do. I don't know what to do with that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It just it doesn't like light her up in that way because she's not having that big emotional reaction to it because it doesn't feel like the thing that would give her a big emotional reaction. And so once she sort of works that through by the end of the therapy, she became very attracted to the kinds of guys who would treat her the way she wanted to be treated.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And she was no longer attracted to the guys. So she'd get that initial kind of like, oh, I feel something when I'm in the presence of a guy like that. But I'm not really interested in a relationship with that kind of guy. So that's, I think, what therapy can do for people.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so you want to make somebody comfortable. You want to make sure that you feel like they are not being rushed to share something that they're not ready to share. So it's just the process. I think it's a very human interaction. Therapy to me is not like expert and this other person And then it feels very asymmetrical. Of course, we're using our training and that's why they're coming to us.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, two things. One is that there's this concept of cherophobia, which is kind of fear of joy. And so, so many people, because they grew up in a way where whenever, let's say the parent was reliable in moments, right? Like at certain times, and then they were unreliable or they were really calm, but then they would blow up and you never knew what was going to happen.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It was like you were walking on eggshells the whole time, right? So you're very afraid of anything that goes well, you think the other shoe is going to drop. Like at any moment. So you don't want to pick something that, and again, again, outside of your awareness, like you don't pick the calm partner because it feels too good. Like something's going to go wrong.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I'll pick the volatile partner because I'm prepared. I'm prepared for that level of volatility, right? And so people sabotage all the time, whether it's about a job or a partner or, you know, whatever they want.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They think, I am not going to go there because it's not safe to feel joy because something will go wrong and I will be crushed and it will be harder to have the experience of joy and to have it crushed than to never feel the joy. So there was a woman that I wrote about in my book who –
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
She just she wouldn't let herself feel any joy or get excited about a partner or excited about she wanted to be an artist and doing her art and things were going really well. And then she'd self-sabotage. It's like I would you can't fire me. I quit. Right. It's like I'm going to create the bad thing to happen to myself because if it happens from the universe, it's going to feel even worse.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I think we need to kind of really be aware there are lots of people out there who are terrified. of good things happening even though they say they desperately want good things to happen.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so they make bad things happen or they make sure good things don't happen to them because it feels so uncomfortable to sit in that space of the other's just gonna drop at any moment and I can't deal with that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But the other thing I wanna say about this slow burn type of thing is there was a study that was done that I wrote about in one of my books where they did a longitudinal study and they looked at people over 20 years and they followed up with them every five years from the first date to where they are later.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And they had them instead of like historically saying, you know, when you ask people in relationships and you say, what was it like when you first met? And they'll tell you some story. But it's retrospective. It's not like you weren't there at the time. You're sort of telling it through the lens of where you are now.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But I feel like it's very much a human to human interchange.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
What was great about this study was people wrote down at the time, here's what, here's how I feel. So people who were, let's say, got married and were happy would say almost unilaterally, like, there was so much chemistry. We had such a good time on the first date. It was amazing. Whereas at the time they might have said, like, yeah, it was okay. Maybe I'll see this person again. Fine.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like, no butterflies or, you know, whatever. But that's not the story they're telling themselves about it. Now, people who either are unhappily together or no longer together would say, yeah, there was nothing there. There was no chemistry. I didn't really like the person. But at the time, they might have said, like, wow, I'm really interested in this person. It was like we had so much chemistry.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So we change our stories based on our present experience. And we think we're telling an accurate version of what actually happened. And the reason I bring this up is because since people who are sort of happy couples tell these stories to other people, we think in our culture that if you go on a first date and you don't have that immediate spark, that it's not worth it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like don't go on a second date. And what happens is sometimes a lot of the time when you have that immediate spark, it doesn't mean what you think it means. It's not that a spark is bad. It means that you really need to see what it means. And it's not that not having a spark is bad. If you go on a date And you feel like it was a nice conversation and I had a good enough time.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Go spend another hour with this person. Just go on another date with them and see what happens. But we don't do that because we have this illusion that you can just go back on an app or there's so many people out there. And so we try to optimize. As opposed to saying, what would it be like? I felt good when I was with this person. I didn't feel that rush, but I felt pretty good.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I think I'll go see what that's like again. And that should be our bar, not like, do I feel this rush? Do I feel like this is amazing? But did I have a good enough time? Sure, let me go see what that's like.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yes. And when I see couples who come in and they've been married for a long time now and they say, you know, well, say, what is the origin story? How did you meet? What was that like? What were you attracted to in the other person? And so often I'll hear words like, it was so exciting. I found this person so exciting.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And it's like, that's the very thing that what you thought was excitement was actually volatility or was actually sort of anxiety as opposed to that sense of you can be calm and feel excited about the other person. So we're talking about a neurological state, right? Your nervous system. And then we're talking about your interpretation of of what that means. So sometimes calmness is exciting.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Sometimes excitement is anxiety provoking. And so you have to be able to tell the difference between the two.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think that as humans, we try to make sense of our feelings through stories, that we tell ourself a story about why we're feeling a certain way. And sometimes we aren't that skilled, because nobody taught us this, to access our feelings. And that happens because kids are often talked out of their feelings.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So when you're young, for example, and say you say to your parent, I'm really worried about this. And your parent will say, oh, don't worry about that. That's nothing to worry about. Or I'm really mad about this. You're so sensitive, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or because parents are really uncomfortable when their kids are feeling sad because they feel like it's my responsibility to make sure they're not sad, which is not your responsibility as a parent. You're there to sit with your child and and be present for them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So if your child says, I'm really sad that so-and-so sat with so-and-so at lunch today, and the parent will say, well, here's what you can do, or that's terrible, or, right? Instead of like, oh, tell me more. And I think that
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. And so when you talk about that draining kind of activation, sometimes what we do when that happens is we go numb. Right. So we don't want to feel anything. So, you know, there's this great expression that the like scrolling through the Internet when people mindlessly do that. A colleague of mine said it's the most effective non-prescription painkiller out there. Can you repeat that?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
As a parent or even as a partner, when your partner comes to you or your friend comes to you or a family member comes to you and tells you something, often what we do is we try to talk them out of the feeling that they're having or help them get rid of the feeling because we think it's a negative feeling.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Because I want people to understand this. So, yeah. So it's the most effective non-prescription painkiller out there, right? And so it's interesting when you think about numbness because people think that numbness is the absence of feelings. But actually numbness is the sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. And so you're shutting down. So when people say, oh, I'm numb.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm not feeling anything. Actually, you're feeling so much and you're feeling flooded. You're feeling overwhelmed. And so we need to figure out what are you feeling. So it's actually a state of arousal that you can't handle. And so then you're shutting down. But it's not that you're not having feelings. You're having so many feelings that you can't tolerate it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And that is not, you know, that is not the, you know, people say, oh, I'm feeling numb. I'm feeling nothing. No, we need to figure out what is so overwhelming to your nervous system right now.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah, I see that in couples a lot where they come in and one person is saying, you know, like, I feel nothing. I don't know what this other person's so upset about, right? And then when you really get into it, it's like this person's feeling all kinds of things, right? And it's really important that we understand when we are shut down versus when we are calm. Those are two very different states.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
When feelings are all positive because they're like a compass, they tell us what direction to go in. we can access them. So when you say to someone, tell me more, then the kid might say, well, yeah, it was really hard. And then they'll talk about maybe like why the person might have sat at a different table or what might have happened.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. Well, here's an example. So a couple comes in. Let's say it's a heterosexual couple, but it could be any couple. Often, it is the woman in the couple who will say something to her partner like, I just feel like I can't reach you. I feel like we're very disconnected. I want you to tell me how you feel. And because of our cultural stigma around men showing emotion,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
He has told himself, like, yeah, this bothers me or that bothers me or I'm unhappy in this way, but I don't feel anything. I'm fine. Our marriage is good. So he doesn't even understand why he's there. And he thinks he's there for her because she insisted on it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so when we finally get to maybe something that he's feeling and he finally does open up, it's so interesting because maybe he's sharing something very vulnerable or maybe he tears up a little bit. So you can tell, like your body will tell you what you're feeling even if you aren't aware of it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You see, okay, there's some moisture there in his eyes or maybe a tear falls or maybe he actually starts crying. And her reaction and her whole reason for bringing him in was, you know, I need you to open up to me. I want to feel connected to you. I want to understand your inner life more. Well, he does it. And she then looks at me like a deer in headlights, like, oh, wow.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I don't feel safe when he doesn't open up to me, but I also don't feel safe when he's being vulnerable in this way. And these are sort of gender stereotypes that we think we might not fall prey to, but we do. And so it's so interesting that often men are the ones who seem sort of numb or calm, right, which are two, again, very different things in the relationship. But that's not really the case.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's that there's no room for him to express anything. So he has to kind of push everything down, probably, again, outside of his awareness. And then the couple feels disconnected and both of them are unhappy.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah, exactly. You know, it's interesting because men will come in if I'm seeing them alone, and they'll often say something like, I've never told anyone this before. And they literally mean, I've never told anyone this before. Because when men hang out, it's not the same sort of level of let's talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Women will come in and say something like, I've never told anyone this before. except for my mother, my sister, my best friend, right? So they've told maybe one, two, or three people, but they feel like they haven't told anyone because for women, that's kind of not telling anyone.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And we really do have a lot of answers inside if we listen to the feelings. But we're talked out of the feelings and then we grow up thinking, if I'm feeling sad or angry or anxious, then, you know, I need to get rid of the feeling as opposed to I need to use that feeling.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I mean like something about themselves where they feel maybe hesitant to share that or they feel ashamed about that or they're not sure about something. So you can see that difference. But I also think it happens very early. So I'm the mom of a boy. I mean, he's now a teenager.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But it's interesting because when I didn't notice this till I was raising a boy and I grew up with a brother, but I didn't notice it that when he let's say he would like fall on the playground. Right. like two or three years old, everybody would say to him or the boys around him like, oh, it's fine, brush it off, you're good, you're good, right? Even if he was like in pain.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And if a girl falls and she's in pain, they're like, oh, honey, come here. How are you? Let's see, how are you feeling about this? Are you hurt? Are you okay? So very early on, they get these messages like girls can talk about it. Boys can't talk about it. I remember when my son was he was a basketball player and in high school and he had or this was in actually middle school.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And in a practice, he got pushed down and his arm was kind of like not right. And, you know, everyone was like, get back up. It's fine. Well, his arm is like hanging off. Right. So, you know, I was like, no, I think he needs to go to the ER. And of course, he was mortified that I said that. But in fact, he had broken his arm. So that's the difference.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
If a girl had fallen down and her arm was like that, people would say like, oh, why don't you get it checked out? So what happens when these people get into adult relationships and this was what they were told about words and talking about things? You really see those differences.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But the other thing I want to say about words is women are brought up to think that whenever you have a feeling, you should share it. And my response to that is no. And people say, what do you mean you're a therapist? What do you mean don't share your feelings? You don't need to share every thought or feeling that crosses your mind unfiltered with your partner. That is not healthy communication.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Healthy communication means we have filters and we get to think about, and we call it mentalizing, how will what I'm about to say land there? on the other person. It's not like you're regurgitating all of your thoughts onto the other person. They're just supposed to deal with them. It's about relationally thinking, how will this person respond to that?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Not like you have to take care of their feelings, but is it kind? Is it true? Is it useful? Does it meet those three criteria? And if it doesn't, why am I talking? Why am I sharing this?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so instead what we do is we come up with all these stories like the problem is out there as opposed to, oh, I have some really good information in here.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yes, yes. And what you're talking about is projective identification. So projection, right, is when you're feeling angry about something. Say you had like your boss did something to you at work and they upset you in some way or they were unkind and you're angry about or they're going to make you work all night and you're really pissed about that, right? So you're angry.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So you come home and you end up yelling at your partner. right? So you're projecting, you're really mad at your boss, but all of a sudden you're like yelling at your partner, you're angry at your partner. That's projection. You're projecting one feeling about someone onto a different person that had nothing to do with the situation.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Projective identification is a psychological process where you actually insert your feeling into the other person. So you're angry about something that happened at work, It's not that you are now angry at your partner. It's that you make your partner angry. It's like a hot potato.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like you take your feelings and you toss them to someone else because you can't tolerate the discomfort of that feeling. So I don't want to deal with the feeling. So I'm going to say something to you that's going to make you angry, right? And now they have to hold all the anger. You feel great. You're fine because you're not holding the anger anymore. And now they're the ones who can't sleep.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They're the ones who are upset. They're the ones who have to deal with what you couldn't tolerate. So, again, we have to think about, you know, do we need to – like why are we saying what we're saying? Can we be more intentional about how we communicate? Which doesn't mean you have to walk through a minefield. It just means that you have to be more aware of your feeling state first.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And owning your feeling state and making sure that you aren't using other people in your environment to release your feeling state to something else. That you need to learn how you can shift your own feeling state to one that feels better for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think that's the difference between reacting and responding. So often what we do is we react to something. And that's not processed, not thought through. And again, it doesn't have to take, like you're saying, it doesn't have to take a long time to just even count to five and breathe. And see, you know, because reacting, reacting means acting again.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So you are normally when you're reacting and it's like that zero to 60, you're acting on something that happened in the past and you're layering it on to whatever's happening in the present. So you're having a big reaction to something. We like to say if it's historical, it's if it's hysterical, it's historical.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Meaning if you're – and by hysterical, I mean if you're having a big reaction, there's probably something from your past, some reaction that is visceral to you that you're having that is getting layered on to this current situation, experience, problem. And you don't realize it. So that's reacting. You're acting again. You're acting on something that happened in the past.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
If it's hysterical, it's historical. Responding is I'm going to take a breath. I'm having a big reaction. I'm going to sit for a minute. Again, regulating your nervous system. And now I can kind of think about this differently. So we need space between, you know, there's that famous Viktor Frankl quote of, you know, between stimulus and response, there is a space.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And in that space lies our choice and our freedom. That's a paraphrase of it. But you need that space between the stimulus, whatever the thing is that activated you, and your response. So that's the difference between reacting and responding.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think what we've eliminated is there's so much more space in a face-to-face conversation. So when I have young therapy clients who are maybe in their early 20s, And I had one client who was telling me this story in therapy a while ago. And now I understand what this means, but this was several years ago. And she was telling it like this.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
She had her thumbs in the air and she said, and then I said, and then he said, and then I said, and I'm thinking, what is she doing? And then I realized, I said, wait, you had this conversation on text? And she said, yes. And it was a really important conversation. And I said, I was trying to explain to her why they were missing certain cues.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They were missing what it feels like to be in the space together. They were missing the experience of looking in each other's eyes, of seeing facial expressions and body language. And she said, oh, no, but we also used emojis. And I had to explain to her why an emoji does not replace face-to-face interaction. Face-to-face interaction slows you down, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You can just text anything and you don't realize there's another person at the other side of this on their phone who is reacting to text. your reaction. And I think that, you know, this is when we go back to comment sections, we don't realize like there's another person out there. We know that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But when there are so many times that we would have a very different kind of conversation with our partner, with family members, with friends, in our workplace, in comment sections, if we could remember that there's a human there. And the easiest way to do that is to see someone like this, looking across the table at you. We can't always do that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But I think when you're having important conversations that we should remember, wait, this probably isn't appropriate to talk about on text, even though people think that, well, of course, it's so much more efficient. Actually, it's not, because now you're going to have conflict. Now you're going to have misunderstandings.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And now you're going to spend all this time trying to repair the rupture that just happened because you had the conversation on text.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I'll say to people, you know, because like I have a client and he's always sort of – he says, well, I just get pulled into it with my girlfriend. And I'm like, really? Does somebody have a gun to your head? Right? And this is where I think change – you know, we talk about what we want to accomplish in therapy and it's change.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's not just coming in and downloading the problem of the week and leaving and downloading the problem of the week again and leaving. Right. I like to say the insight is the booby prize of therapy, that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't make change out in the world, the insight is useless.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So someone will say, oh, I got into that argument with my, you know, whoever, my partner over the weekend. And I'll say, well, did you do something different? They'll say, well, no, but I understand why. Great. That's good that you understand why. But you need to do something different because we're all doing this dance thing. with someone else, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And if you change your dance steps, so people say, I want the other person to change. And I say, well, you can't change the other person, but you can influence the other person by making changes yourself. So if you change your dance steps, the other person will either have to change their dance steps too, because you're not doing that old dance with them anymore, or they'll leave the dance floor.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And people are so afraid the person will leave the dance floor. And it's like, well, if they're not going to dance with you in a way that is the kind of relationship that you want, it's okay that they leave the dance floor. Go find someone who will dance with you in the way you want to dance.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Either. I don't think either is a good word. I think it's so interesting because I think that it's just – we're just humans and I don't mean to sound all woo-woo about this. But I really feel like the relationship that you have in that room, it's so unique and I have not figured out a way to describe it. And I don't think client or patient quite does it. But for simplicity's sake, we use either.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think the reason that people have so much trouble changing is because the step that they've chosen is too big of a step to take at once. You need small, manageable steps. And I think people also forget this is why New Year's resolutions tend not to last very long because change is a process. And there's a chapter in my book called How Humans Change.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think it's so important for people to understand that there are stages of change. And it starts with pre-contemplation where you don't even realize that you're thinking about making a change. You think like something's not right but I don't really need to change. Like something's just not right in the world. You know, it's my partner. It's my, you know, it's my child. It's my whoever, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. I think what you're talking about is self-regulation versus co-regulation. So self-regulation is when you're having some kind of internal experience, you have choices like, I'm really angry about this. Okay. How do I self-regulate not to ignore the anger? Because the anger is telling me that
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. Then there's contemplation, which is, oh, maybe I could make a change, but I'm not quite ready to do it. And that's when people usually they come to therapy somewhere around pre-contemplation. It's kind of between pre-contemplation and contemplation. Like something's not right. They come to therapy. We get them to contemplation, which is like, oh, maybe I'm contemplating making some changes.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And then there's preparation, which is you're taking some steps to prepare for the change. So it's not like I'm going to dive into the deep end of the pool. It's like, oh, maybe I need to take some swimming lessons or maybe I need to get a swimsuit or maybe I need, you know, whatever it is like I need to prepare to make this change. And then there's action where you actually make the change.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And people think that's the last step. That's action. No. The last stage is maintenance. And maintenance is how do you maintain the change? And maintenance does not mean that you are perfectly maintaining the change. It's more like chutes and ladders if you remember that game where like kind of you go up and then you go down if you –
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You can make mistakes during this time because you're forming a new habit. You're forming a new way of being. And until it becomes familiar, going back to our discussion about how the familiar feels really good to us and the unfamiliar feels really scary, the new thing will take a while to feel familiar. So let's say that you say, like, I'm going to eat healthy.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And that means that I'm not going to, you know, like – eat an entire Haagen-Dazs or something when I'm sad. Then I'm going to do something different. Well, sometimes when you're sad, you might do that again. But then you don't self-flagellate. So it's not like, oh, it failed, so forget it. I'm not going to – like I failed and I'm not able to make this change. No.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or you don't say like, oh, I'm so terrible and that was awful and I'm so weak. Self-flagellation is not helpful. Imagine if your kid came to you and they said, like, I did really poorly on this test. Are you going to say, you're so stupid? You know, like, what's wrong with you? No, you're going to say, well, let's talk about what happened.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And they might say, I needed help and I was embarrassed to ask, or I didn't understand it, or I didn't study. I messed up. I should have studied and I didn't study. Okay, well, what are you going to do differently next time? Let's come up with a plan. So you need to have just like you'd have some compassion for your child and hold them accountable, both.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's hard to hold yourself accountable when you self-flagellate. In the short term, you can, but it doesn't last because it feels so unpleasant. You're just sort of bathing in shame. What you need is self-compassion. And actually, if you have more compassion for yourself, you're more able to hold yourself accountable. So you can say, oh, you know what happened? I was feeling really sad.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I had this whole pint of Haagen-Dazs. But it's okay that I was sad. And there's another way to do this. So next time when I'm sad, I didn't have enough support. So I'm going to call a friend next time. Oh, self-compassion with accountability. Or I'm not going to keep the Haagen-Dazs in the house because I know that when I'm sad, I'm susceptible to that. Maybe one day I'll be able to do it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Maybe a boundary was broken or maybe somebody is treating me in a way that I don't want to be treated or maybe I'm upset with myself for the way that I acted. So it's good information, but then what do you do with it? Can you self-regulate?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But right now, I'm not going to keep that. But there's something else I can do, which is I really feel like I want, for me, self-compassion is related to I'm going to give myself a treat. So maybe my treat is I'm going to, you know, I'm going to have like a healthy snack that I like. Or maybe my treat is I'm going to go to a movie or, you know, whatever it is.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But you have to figure out what works for you and what works for other people might not work for you. So it takes a little bit of experimenting. So maintenance is this kind of experimentation, but having self-compassion with accountability until you find a system that works for you and the new thing becomes a habit. It becomes familiar.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And the thing that you used to do becomes unfamiliar and doesn't feel good anymore.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Can you find ways to look at the anger without screaming, yelling, self-sabotaging, whatever people do that's not a productive use of their anger or your anxiety or your sadness? Co-regulation is important though. And that's something that you see, again, you can see it with parent-child where if the parent can stay calm when the child is not calm, that helps the child to learn to self-regulate.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And with a partner, like say you had a really hard day at work, and you come home and you're just not in a good mood, it's not your partner's responsibility to help you through that. You need to self-regulate. But it sure helps if your partner is regulated and they can help co-regulate you just because they happen to be regulated. You want two adults in the room or at least one adult in the room.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's interesting. So I'm thinking about how when you say no drama, what does that actually mean? And it's really important because when you look at why people who are most satisfied with their lives, what is it about their lives? They're surrounded by people that they feel good about. Now, let me be clear about what that means.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So, you know, we talk about this concept of idiot compassion versus wise compassion.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So idiot compassion is what if you surround yourself with people who are only going to validate your experience. When you say no drama. That's not necessarily a great thing. So, like, for example, you know, let's say that, you know, someone says to her friends, like, I don't understand why he broke up with me or I don't understand, you know, why this keeps happening to me.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And your friend's like, no, you go, girl. He's wrong. You're right. You know, whatever. Or, you know, my partner's doing this. And we tend to kind of feel like our job as a friend is to support the position of our friends. That's idiot compassion. Wise compassion is what you get in therapy where we say – You know, like, what might be going on here?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. We don't say that to our friends in Idiot Compassion. Okay? So think about that. So is it that you want no drama, meaning you want your friends to kind of back up everything you're saying? You're not going to grow as a person. You're not going to hear... what you need to hear.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
The friends you want to surround yourself with are people who will tell you the truth in a kind, respectful way and that you're willing to hear it. So some people think that it would be drama if their friends kind of called them on their bullshit. Right. That's not drama. So that's a healthy, communicative, open, honest relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. What I'm talking about is when people say no drama, what they mean is don't bring anything up, right? Don't challenge anything. Don't bring anything to my attention that maybe needs to be brought to my attention because I could be better in this relationship. You know, to me, I think what you're talking about is volatility, which is drama, right? Like
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Can you express the thing you want to express in a way that feels like an invitation or like it comes from a place of curiosity as opposed to blame? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
If you have two children in the room, like grown children, adults, then everybody gets dysregulated. So it's really important that at least one person is being the adult in the room and one person is regulated. If both people, like you're in an argument, both people are dysregulated, nothing good is going to come from that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yes. And that happens so often. It's such an easy fix for couples because sometimes they think, we have to deal with this right now. And it feels urgent to deal with it right now because I feel hurt right now. Or I can't believe you said that. Or we need to resolve this right now. That can be the worst possible thing. So it's not like, let's forget about it. It's
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm going to go take a walk or I'm going to go to the gym or I'm going to go, you know, read for a few minutes or I'm going to go relax, whatever that is. And then let's talk in an hour about it or let's talk tonight. Right. And you can stay connected during that time. So what are you going to do in the intervening time if you're just making up stories about the other person? They're insensitive.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And what their role is and what is not going the way they want in their lives. And this isn't about blaming them for the problem at all. It's about saying there might be some truly difficult situations out there. You might have a parent with mental health issues. And, you know, what are you going to do about that?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They don't care about me. They don't prioritize me. then that's not helpful. But in that intervening time, if you can say, if I were telling this story from the other person's perspective, what would their version of this story be? And is there a nugget of overlap? And is there a nugget of something that feels really genuine to me that I can understand and even have compassion for?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You probably aren't going to change the fact that they have mental health issues. But your reaction can change. So you can do something different. We can talk about what that might look like. You cannot... engage in that dance. You can set boundaries. You can, you know, there are different ways to make choices about that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
There are sort of like societal things that we can't change, but like what can you do so that you feel like you have agency in the world? Because we all have agency to some degree. So where do we find that agency as opposed to going into this like helpless, I'm the victim position? And people don't like to hear that. They say, what kind of therapist are you calling people victims?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm not saying people are victims. I'm saying people have the mindset that they don't have agency and then they become victims. But when you realize that you have agency, you realize, well, there are really difficult people, things, circumstances in the world. But I get to choose how to respond to them.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. So here's what's interesting about texting is so many times people will come in and they'll say, we had this conversation on text. And I'll say, can you show me the conversation? Which people think, why would you do that? Why wouldn't you want to hear the narrative from that person?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, I just heard the narrative, but I want to see what was actually said because they're like, oh, I don't really know. Or let me read you what they said. And so, but I want to see what both parts of that were. And then the person can see, oh, here's how I contributed to that. Or here's a choice that I made in that moment.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And that's going to help you come back when you have the conversation. But you have to be regulated.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Again, I prefer that these conversations that people have are face-to-face conversations when they're kind of about something in the relationship. You know, text is great for like your dailiness of, hey, look what I had for lunch or how are you doing or I love you or whatever, right? Or, you know, can you pick up the kid?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But when you're having some kind of, you know, again, rupture or conflict between you, That's not a text conversation. But many people will do that on text. And then now we have a record. So it's not just like what my client is saying to me. It's like this is how the conversation actually went down. We have a transcript of it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And it's really helpful for people to be able to look at that transcript.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. They don't. And I think there's this hierarchy of pain that people have about certain things. Like, well, you only dated for this amount of time. How can it be that painful this amount of time after the breakup? You know, like there's this hierarchy. But if it was a divorce, then, you know, people understand why a year later you're still dealing with it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or, you know, if you were only married for five years versus married for 20 years, like there's some hierarchy of pain that we have around things. Like it was a miscarriage, but your child, you know, your eight year old didn't die.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They don't say it, but that's how they treat people. It's like you had a miscarriage. What they say is like, oh, it's okay. You'll get pregnant again. If your child dies, they're not like, it's okay. You'll have another child, right? But it feels the person who had a miscarriage that they lost their child. It's very, very painful.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But listen to how we talk to people who have these experiences that we tend to think that some experiences are sort of higher on the hierarchy of pain than others are. And so we think like a breakup is not as bad as – like a breakup in a non-marriage or a short marriage is not as hard as a breakup with a long marriage or whatever the hierarchy is.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or even someone who – it's like, well – and this is the reason that people don't actually get help for things because they think, well – It's just this. It's not really that better. I'm feeling kind of sad or I can't sleep or I'm having trouble in this relationship. But it's not that bad because I have a roof over my head and food on the table, so I don't need to go get help.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But let's say you fall and you clearly have like, you know, broken your wrist. You're not going to sit there and go, I don't need to do anything about that because I don't have stage four cancer. You're going to be like, I'm going because I need to get my wrist repaired.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So we treat sort of physical health and mental health as two separate entities when, of course, the mind and the body are all intertwined. And I think that with breakups, it's the same thing. It's like people think, well, it's not that big of a deal after the first X amount of time. And breakups can really mark you depending on how they went down.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like if it was really volatile, if it was one of these things where you got no sense of if you were cheated on, if you didn't understand why. The breakup happened, like it was very surprising to you. You know, all those things. It can really be a different kind of breakup than a breakup where a person, it might be very painful, but you understand sort of why the breakup is happening.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It doesn't mean you don't feel the loss, but there's something different about the quality of the breakup. And so then people tell stories about the breakup because they didn't get the real story. So the story now becomes like you don't really understand why the person is breaking up with you. Because they didn't communicate during the relationship that maybe they were unhappy.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And now you watch them on social media. So you're watching a story and you have this whole story in your mind of, look at them. They're on this vacation or they're not even like with another person. They're just like, look, they look so happy. But it's social media. Of course they look happy. People are not posting on social media of I'm so sad about my breakup.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Generally, there's a whole like sort of subculture of people who do that. But it's a different thing. Very generational. Yes.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Let's just talk about that. So let's say you have to move forward. It's very hard to move forward when you're watching the other person's life. You're not moving forward at all. They're moving forward, maybe. You don't really know. But why are you spending so much time watching someone else move forward? Can we focus on how you might move forward, whatever that might look like?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But it's really hard when you have this split screen of their life is happening and your life is happening.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. So sometimes what the loss is about isn't so much about the other person. It's about the loss of what it feels like to be in a primary relationship. So you're losing the primary relationship and then happens to be with this specific person. And so there were good qualities about that specific person and qualities that maybe weren't right for you. But what you're losing is the dailiness.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So, so much of what feels good about being in a primary relationship is, you know, you get to tell the person the minutia of your day, the little things, the shared history and the shared experiences that become the shorthand and the inside jokes. and the routine of, you know, your flight landed, who are you going to text? Oh, text your partner, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, just the built-in infrastructure of being in a primary relationship and someone who knows, like, what kind of pizza you like and, you know, all those little things that come from, you know, going through daily life together and, you know,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
all the things about their families and all the things about the people in their lives and the people they're talking about, like this friend and this boss and whatever, their coworkers. So it's this whole world that's been co-created. And then all of a sudden, when that person isn't there anymore,
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
that the dailiness of your life changes drastically like you're not waking up with that person you're not eating meals with that person you're not talking about what's for dinner with that person you're not um saying you're wondering how that thing with their sister worked out but you don't know now because right and you're losing the side kind of shared people too like you might have liked that person's family a lot sometimes you stay in touch with the family but sometimes you don't
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So like your world changes so much in the day to day. You're not just losing that person. You're losing an entire world that you were living in. And now your world looks so different and you have nothing to replace it with yet. So it doesn't mean you have to replace it with another partner. You might replace it with things in your own life. But you just, you know, breakups tend to happen.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Maybe you saw the breakup coming, but you're not really imagining what it will be like after until you're in it. And you can't really understand what it's like until you're in that breakup phase. So I think that makes it so hard because you're losing a lifestyle, right? Like the dailiness of your life.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And, you know, it's like when you're in a relationship, you're in the present, but you're also in the future. So you imagined that the present was going to be the future. And now, mother of all plot twists, the future was just taken away along with the present. So it's not just you're losing the day-to-day.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You're losing what you imagined next year was going to be like and five years were going to be like. So— It's a huge thing. It's so interesting because in my most recent book, it starts with my breakup. And that's how I end up in therapy. And my whole thing is like, you know, the idiot compassion that we were talking about with my friends. He's a jerk and he's terrible and you dodged a bullet.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And my therapist, who I thought was going to validate this position – didn't, for the better. And so by the end of the book, you know, people even write in now, they're like, oh, I can't believe I call him boyfriend in the book. I can't believe he did that. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I was trying to say he's a good guy.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like, you have to understand that I was seeing this through the lens of the breakup. And then over time, I see that I was responsible for this, too. I had a role in this, too. I chose not to see the things that I didn't want to see because I didn't want to live in that world of the breakup. Right? So I think it's...
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Wanting what you were saying earlier about wanting to have a shared narrative like we feel so wounded by the fact that the person Let's say that they broke up with us Or even if you break up with them that they don't see the relationship the way you saw it Like they had a different experience of it and you feel like well, they're not seeing it in the right way No, they're just seeing it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They are seeing it in the right way from their perspective and And I think that we have this way of wanting to heal the wound by their saying, oh, no, no, you were great in this relationship. It was me.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. And we so want that. And the reality is that your partner is going to see things about you that maybe you don't agree with or maybe they're true and that's why they hurt.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yes, it's those little things, those intangibles.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So there's this theory. It's from the Gottmans who do this research on couples. And they talk about the bank of goodwill, that you need five deposits into the bank of goodwill for every one withdrawal. And so we tend to, when we're in a relationship, we don't like something about something that's happening in the relationship. We think about what's not working.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We're taking all these withdrawals from the Bank of Goodwill. But like things like smell, that's a deposit. Like you smell so good. I really like your smell. Do we say that enough? Do we focus on the things? Like how many deposits are we actually making so that when we do make a withdrawal, it doesn't empty the bank account?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And it's usually when a breakup happens that all of a sudden we think about all those things that we didn't deposit but now we miss, right? That we're sitting in our bank account and we don't have access to that account anymore. The account's closed. But when the account was open, we didn't look at what we had in there.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think that the people who are what I see with couples who are most successful are the people who do notice what's in the bank account even if they have to take a withdrawal every now and again.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That's why I often start a couple session with, how did you meet? Because usually when people come to couples therapy, they think the first thing that's going to happen is you're going to say, so what's going on? Then they'll start with the problem. And then they're like in that withdrawal from the bank account space. So I like to say, well, tell me how you met.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And immediately, usually there's like, Oh, and they have this great story, right? And they remember what they love about the other person. So we start with that. And you can see them sort of remembering who the person is that they fell in love with. Like, oh, I thought he was so cute or whatever.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You know, oh, was this really – we were friends for a year and I didn't know if he liked me and then this happened and then I really admired this about him or her, right? And so they start in this different space.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think about it like – and this is going to sound like a weird metaphor, but you think about like nonstick pans versus like, you know, a regular pan that you have to put something in so that the stuff doesn't stick to it. When I think about like there are people for whom the good stuff, they're like Teflon pans. The good stuff doesn't stick.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But the bad stuff about the other person sticks like a non-stick, like a pan that sticks, right? So it's like you think about like what is sticking about your partner when you think about like what they're putting in the pan, right? Like are you in a Teflon pan for good things or are you in a different kind of pan for good things? Because You have to think, like, what am I focusing on?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Where does my attention go? And so, you know, why are you focusing on the things that are upsetting you so much? And, you know, there are certain things that you're never going to change about your partner. Like your partner, we don't get to order up our partners a la carte.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We don't get to say, like, I'll take these qualities of my partner, but I'll take this thing that I don't like about them on the side. You don't get to do that. People come, there are no substitutions. They come as a whole group. That's it. That's what's offered on the menu. And so people think, well, I can change the thing that I don't like and I can make that person a la carte.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You can't do that. You can't order them up that way. So there are always going to be things that irritate you or that are suboptimal in a perfect world about your partner. Are you going to focus on that or are you going to focus on the things that you really love about your partner?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And this is when people cheat. What often happens is there's a specific quality about their behavior partner may be. Sometimes it has nothing to do with your partner, by the way.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think this is so important to talk about when we talk about infidelity, that often it really has nothing to do with the partner, that somebody is expecting their partner, again, going back to vitality and aliveness, to provide that for them. And if the partner doesn't provide that for them but your partner shouldn't be providing that for you, they're additive.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
They're not providing a lack or a deficit in you. Sometimes that's why people cheat. But other times they say, like, there's this quality about my partner that is really, you know, like I don't like it. Like let's take, for example, I wish that my partner – were more, let's say, ambitious.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So they go and they like cheat with someone who's more ambitious, but then the person isn't loving or isn't communicative or isn't, you know, whatever the other good qualities that the partner they have has. So they think that by replacing this one trait that the other person's going to have all the other great traits that the existing partner already has.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And generally you're treating like one set of problems for another set of problems. So it's interesting that people think, like, I can fix this problem because this person has that thing that I really want. If your partner doesn't have any of that, like it's a degree, it's on a spectrum. So is your partner not ambitious at all? Or is your partner ambitious about different kinds of things?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like they want to be a really good parent and they're really, you know, invested in that. Or they want to do something like philanthropic and they're really invested in that, but it doesn't pay a lot. You know, so what are they, like what energizes them? Where's their purpose? Where's their meaning? You know, there's different kinds of ambition.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right. So I like to say it's the difference between the what if and the what is. And people who focus too much on the what if, what if this, they lose sight of what is. And usually there's so much good that they really don't want to give up. in the what is. So if you're going to keep focusing on the what if, you blind yourself to the what is. And I think the what if is a big trap.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, it's kind of like think of it – so I am sort of an amateur photographer and I think about it like you can take a picture of – you can like focus on the same subject. You can focus on one part of it or you can just move the camera slightly and then you're focused on something entirely different. But it's the same thing that I'm taking a picture of, right? Yeah.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So I always say to people, like, can you – your focus is always on this. Can you, like, move the camera slightly and focus – you know, find a different part to focus the camera on. If you're always focusing on something that makes you unhappy, you're going to be unhappy. So why don't you just move the camera and focus on the other things? You get to choose.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
People think they have no choice in the matter. Right. right? Like, well, my brain just goes there. My mind just goes there. It's like, no, you get to choose what you put your attention on. You actually have a choice.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
It's kind of like I feel like the work that we do in the room is about understanding and understanding sort of like where the gap is between what we say we want and what we actually do. So usually there is – it's all about what is in that gap, what is getting in the way because we're very clear by the way about what we want usually.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And then there's like some gap between our behavior that isn't moving in that direction. In fact, moves us often – either keeps us stuck or moves us in the opposite direction. So it's kind of out in the world between sessions. We're working on the behavior around what is getting in the way in that gap. And then we're doing kind of the thinking and the feeling.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I don't mean that people aren't thinking and feeling outside of session. It means they're using their feelings and their thoughts differently. They're taking different actions with the feelings and thoughts outside of the session.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So it's really funny because so many people say, like, your gut knows, right? Like, listen to your gut. And for some people, because it's historical, right, like what's in their gut, it's like, no, no, no, don't listen to your gut. And it sounds really strange for a therapist to say to somebody, no, don't listen to your gut.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But sometimes you literally have to say to people, whatever your first instinct is there, do the opposite. Do the thing that feels uncomfortable because your gut is what feels comfortable. And the thing that feels comfortable, again, is the familiar. And the familiar isn't necessarily the thing that is going to lead you to where you want to go.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So it's not like I want people to second guess themselves or not trust themselves. It's that sometimes you have to learn how to hear that very, very quiet voice inside you because your gut is the louder one. Your gut is your first instinct and it's kind of the pre-programmed, the pattern, the automatic response.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like if you think when we talk about sort of like neurological pathways, there's this like freeway that's been built with this one response. Like here's the input, right? And here's the map that follows. Like this person did this and you're going to like travel down that freeway because that's been the well-paved road because you've done it a million times. It doesn't really work out for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I want people to create kind of side roads and different roads and let's take a different path and let's kind of dig out a new – like a new road, right? That now – so your first instinct is still going to be like, let's get on the freeway. And I'm like, no, let's take a side road. Let's do something a little bit different. Let's take a different path.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And that path will now become the new freeway because you're going to keep going down. We're going to dig out that path. The freeway is going to not be trafficked on. We're going to shut down that freeway eventually. And you're going to have a new freeway that's your automatic path. So right now you've got to do the opposite to build this new freeway. I just mixed 20 metaphors.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But the point is that sometimes your gut is just taking you down a well-trodden path that is not the best path for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So here's the thing. So what feels dangerous sometimes, so your gut is trying to protect you. So what feels dangerous is going into this new situation. Because it's uncomfortable to do something different. So your gut is saying, oh, let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done. Even if the comfortable thing makes you miserable.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Let's do the comfortable thing that we've always done because it feels very dangerous to try this new thing. But sometimes doing the thing that feels dangerous... is actually less dangerous.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So in other words, a lot of times people say, I don't want to take a risk. It's too risky. But sometimes the safest thing you can do is to take a risk. Doing the safe thing is actually, you know, you say it's too risky. The safest thing you can do is to take a risk because it's going to lead you closer to what you want to accomplish or the thing that you're trying to get toward.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. When I was in medical school, I remember the people who wanted to work in the ER, like I want to do emergency medicine, were people often who grew up in environments where danger was a part of it, right? So they're used to that, and it doesn't really strike them as like their sense of danger, their barometer is different from maybe a different person's. I think of it as like a thermostat.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
When you think about like let's say you want to set your thermostat at like 72 degrees, right? Some people, their thermostat is off because in their house like they did the slightest thing and their parents treated it like it was a huge, horrible mistake and they're bad and it was an emergency, right? So they don't know how to calibrate like what does 72 actually feel like or the opposite.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like some big thing happened and their parents underreacted. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Thank you. And then they feel better about it. But you don't grow from that. So the thing is that if you can sit with that really hurts and this isn't – like this person is not the arbiter of my self-worth, whoever broke up with me, and for whatever reason – You know, just because someone doesn't value you doesn't mean you don't have value.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think that's a really important lesson for people to learn. So, you know, if I took like some gold, right, like a brick of gold and, you know, and someone said, like, I don't like that. I like silver or I like whatever I like. Right. Doesn't mean the gold inherently lost value. It means that for that person.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Yeah. You don't want two highly reactive people to be together. You also, I think, need to think about there's a saying, we marry our unfinished business, right? So let's say that there's somebody who had a parent who was very kind of avoidant or withdrawn, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That block of gold didn't have value, but the gold has the same amount of value that it had. And I think that we tend to kind of consider somebody else's opinion of us to be the arbiter of our worth. And it's not like your worth is stable. And people, some people will value it. Some people won't. Find the people who value it. because those are the people that you want to be with.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But it doesn't mean that you have less value because somebody doesn't value it or you have more value because someone does value it. You have the same amount of value either way. But I think young people are not, you know, it always hurts. We talked about breakups earlier. They always hurt. And especially when you're young and you don't have experience.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But my concern is that they're not getting the experience of kind of sitting with it. And yes, you want to, you know, have your friends support you and all of that. But I think once you start posting about it or once you start kind of vilifying the other person, you're not learning the lesson. You're not learning how to deal with loss.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Well, I think what the apps do is there's a phenomenon that Barry Schwartz talks about in his book, The Paradox of Choice. And it's the idea that the more choice we have, the less happy we are. So you need some choice, but it's kind of like think of like a fishbowl, an aquarium, and an ocean. Fishbowl is not enough choice. Just too constrained. Ocean, too much choice.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You're like, yeah, there's no direction. Oh my gosh. The aquarium is perfect. It's a certain amount of choice, but it's manageable. You don't get flooded. You don't get overwhelmed. So they did these experiments where like you'd be able to test out, like we have this new jam and And we have 10 different flavors. And which one do you like best? And which one are you going to pick?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
People would get so overwhelmed, they didn't even want to try them. They're like, it's too much. Or we have two flavors. Which one do you like better? Right? Manageable. So there are people who are what we call satisficers and people who are maximizers. So satisficers, well, let me tell you about maximizers first. Maximizers are people, let's say you want to buy a sweater, okay?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You go into the store, you find a sweater that you like. It's the right material, it's the right price, it fits you well, it's the right color, it's good, great. The maximizer says, but maybe I can find something better. So I'm going to take that sweater and put it on the bottom of the pile so that nobody buys it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm going to go to the store next door and I'm going to see if they have something better. Maybe something's on sale. Maybe it's slightly higher end material, whatever it is, right? But they keep going to stores and they keep doing this. And then they think, oh, well, I found the greatest sweater ever and I'm going to get that one. Guess what?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
that person, if they haven't processed that, will be drawn to the partner who is more avoidant, but not because it feels good, but because it's familiar.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
they are less satisfied with that purchase than the person, the satisficer, who would have bought that first sweater in that first store and would have been super happy with that sweater.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Because all of the energy, the emotional and cognitive energy that went into maximizing something for what kind of benefit, like what percent benefit, not much, compared to the amount of
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
energy that they spent trying to maximize they're never satisfied because even when they get that great product something better is going to come out there's going to be a new color that comes out like two weeks later that was in none of the stores so you're always kind of looking over if you're a maximizer you're always kind of looking over your shoulder for like what if something better is out there in dating that's what the apps are like you go out with someone you have a good time
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
You think, well, no butterflies, no sparks, pretty good time, but I don't know. I can go back on the apps. You go back on the apps, look at all the people there. Maybe they're better on this dimension or that dimension. And so what it does is it turns everyone into maximizers. Because there's an illusion of choice. Like not everybody you see is going to be better.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And again, we don't get the a la carte option with people. So there will be different dimensions in which people are more aligned with what you're looking for. But no one's going to be like perfect, right? So why are we looking for perfection? Why don't we look for... And by the way, the satisficers are not settling. This isn't about like, eh, I'll just settle for something. It's like...
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
That sweater was great. You liked everything about it. You don't need to look for anything more. Will there be, if you pick a partner, will there be someone more attractive? Of course. Will there be someone less attractive? Of course, right? And by the way, if we treat dating like shopping, we forget that in shopping, we're the choosers. But in dating, someone has to choose us too.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so sometimes in the kind of couple that you're describing, and I don't know the experience of your friends, but I've seen a lot of couples where it looks like that would be a good match because one person is sort of more in the emotional sphere and one person is less so.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And we, by the way, are not perfect. So an exercise that I like to do with clients is I want you to write down all the reasons that it would be difficult to date you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So instead of making a list of all the qualities you want in a partner, like the partner has to be this, they have to be that, they have to, you know, have these interests, they have to have this amount of ambition, they have to look a certain way, they have to have these interests, whatever it is. I want you to write down everything that would make it difficult.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
to be with you. And some people, it's kind of like in a job interview when they say, what are your weaknesses? And we tend to say things that sound positive. You know, like my weakness is that I work too hard, that I'm too dedicated, that I can't, you know, let go. This is a non-answer. It's a non, right. So you have to be scrupulously honest with yourself. So what makes it hard to be with you?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And if you're really honest with yourself, suddenly you're less of a maximizer, right? Because suddenly you're like, oh, someone, is thinking about the things that, they're looking at me holistically as well. And overall, I'm a pretty good package. But there are things that, you know, maybe they could maximize if they really wanted to.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But then they're going to have to give up some other qualities that I have that the other person might not have. So I think it's really important not to think about dating as shopping. And I think that people who grew up on apps tend to treat dating like shopping. And they don't sit there and make the list of, oh, I can be this way. And that makes it hard, you know, for someone to be with me.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And you could name a million reasons. Oh, and by the way, I tell them that For all the traits you're looking for, however, whatever that number is, because they tend to have a lot, right? It's not just like, I need these three things. It's like, I need these 20 things.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Right? The list. So I said, for every quality that you're looking for, whatever number that is, if it's 20, you need to name 20 things that make it hard to be with you. So it can't be like, there are two things that make it hard to be with you, but you have a list of 20 things that you want.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But sometimes what that is, is one person gets very lonely because they're not really getting that kind of emotional interaction that they want. So it can be a solution for some people because they don't know how to be with a different kind of person.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Okay, so relationships are like cement. So when you're first putting down, right, the cement, it's wet and it's malleable. When it dries, it's very hard to then, now you have to like dig it up. So let's say that punctuality is really important for someone. And they think, well, I don't want to rock the boat. It's the beginning of the relationship.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So yeah, this person comes late all the time, but I'm going to say nothing about it and I'm going to be cool with that, even though I'm not and I'm sitting there seething every time they come late, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And it's kind of like in the first three months of a relationship, I think it was Chris Rock who said this, in the first three months of a relationship, you're not you, you're the ambassador of you. So sometimes people will, you know, who really are not punctual will be punctual and then they'll change. That's not what I'm talking about.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Um, I'm talking about someone who, you know, someone has, they're just not a punctual person like you're saying you are. So if you're dating someone and that person is, is telling themselves like, I'm not going to bring it up. I don't want to rock the boat. It's early in the relationship. The cement is wet. This is when you need to bring it up.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So, because if you don't, what happens is it's like six months down the line. The person is like, I can't believe you're late. What just happened? You know, why are you, you're always late. You don't prioritize me. Yeah. It's like the person's like, this is the first I'm hearing about this. Like the person has had A, no opportunity to change it if they want to, but B, no opportunity to explain.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So it might be that, as happened with one of my therapy clients, the person was always late, but it was because he was trying to please her because she wanted to have dinner. He knew that she liked to eat on the earlier side. He worked really late. So he was trying to kind of like get his work done and get there.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And he was always late because he was trying to like be there when she wanted to have dinner. So he said like, I'm late because I do prioritize you. I'm actually leaving work early to be with you. But I should have just said I can't be here at this time. That's what I should have said. And I was worried you would get mad because it would be too late for you.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But I also feel like you want to make sure that you have figured out your unfinished business, that you're not just, you don't just have radar for the kind of person who hurt you. So What often happens is people haven't processed whatever it was that they wanted more of or less of when they were growing up. And then they go out into the world and they're looking for a partner.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So you see the assumption that she made was you don't care about me. I'm not important to you. Your work is more important. And he's saying, no, I actually was leaving work to be with you and I still couldn't get there on time. So we need to figure out how to work this out. Like, can we have dinner later? Because I'm just going to be late if we do it earlier. And, you know, what can we work out?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So that's an example of if you just bring it up early, you don't build up all these stories about the other person. This person doesn't care. They don't prioritize me. whatever the story is that you're making about that person. And you have a chance to see, is the person willing to do something about it?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Or if they're not, are you willing to be flexible and say, you know what, this person, they just run late. And I like so many other things about them. And I'm going to adjust to the fact that this is one thing that in a perfect world, I would like them to be more punctual. But there's so many great things that this is one thing that I'm going to adjust to.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I think that the most important question to ask yourself after you go on a first date or a second date or a third date is, how do I feel when I'm with this person? Because all the other stuff is just kind of like a cognitive exercise, right? So one of my clients, she said to herself, like, I don't want to date any. She was in her early 30s. And she said, I want to have kids with a partner.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I'm 31 years old. I don't want to date anyone. I'll date someone who's divorced, but I won't date someone who has kids. She met someone online. It didn't have the kid question. In that particular app that she was using, she went to meet him. On the first date, she's having such a good time, and it comes up that he has a kid.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And she was having such a good time that she really debated, like, should I go out with him again? Should I not go out with him again? This is not what I want. I don't want to deal with that. It's too messy, and it's not what I imagined. Right. If she had known on that dating app that he had asked if he had kids and he had put that, she would never have met him. That is her husband.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
She is so happy. I mean, they've been married now for like 15 years. They have kids together. They have the other kid. She's so happy. So I think that when we make that list that you said like should you take things off the list, I think that you need to have flexibility about things that may not matter when But you have to be very inflexible about the things that do matter.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So character qualities, they matter. Values that align, that matters. So those are things that don't be flexible on that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And they literally have radar for a person who is exactly like the person who hurt them but doesn't look like that. So it's like I'm going to choose someone who is the opposite of the parent who hurt me. And then you find this person and after you get to know them a little bit, you're like, wow, that person drinks a lot too. I didn't realize that. Or that person is really withholding too.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
think of that list and by the way a lot of people don't sit there and write a list but they have it in their head you know there's this process of i know what i'm looking for whatever some people say like i know it when i see it but there's really a list in there because you you know what you're looking for and it matches this list in your head um so on that list i'm saying you need to put more things like character qualities are they honest
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Are they reliable? Can I trust them? Do we have the same kind of vision of the kind of life that we want to lead? You know, where are we aligned on those important things? Because those things are – those are sort of hard to bridge, those gaps. You know, like they're just going to keep coming up and be very difficult to deal with. Things like do we have to have all the same interests? No.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Um, you know, do we, um, you know, does the person have kids or not? Well, you may, that may not be the, the ideal choice, but look what happened to this other person that, you know, like, you don't know. I think that question that I'm going back to of how does this person make me feel if the character qualities are there?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Because sometimes people who don't have the character qualities that you want are very charming and they can make you feel great. But if they have the character qualities, do I feel calm around this person?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Going back to this idea of peace and calm, I like this idea. Somebody had mentioned that I love this metaphor of being able to bring your rough drafts to the other person, meaning that you don't have to be on all the time with this person, that you can bring sort of the rough draft of yourself, of this idea of, you know, your kind of imperfect draft. And they collaborate with you on that.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And I think that's so beautiful, right? What it means is you can be yourself. And yourself doesn't mean I can act in any way I want. I can have no boundaries. I can be abusive. No, that's not the rough draft. But it's kind of like I am working this through. I'm trying to understand this. I'm not perfect. Sometimes I will make mistakes.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And can you be comfortable enough around each other to hold yourself accountable but still feel loved by the other person?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And when I say how, I mean, do you feel calm? Do you feel content? Yeah. And so calmness is different from sort of the activation. Contentment is different from like out of your mind happy. Of course, in the beginning and hopefully throughout the relationship, there will be times when you feel this like incredible happiness. energy around happiness and joy and being around the other person.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But most of the time what you're going to feel around your partner is a sense of safety, a safe place to land, contentment. I enjoy this person's sense of humor. I enjoy sitting with them even through our silences. I enjoy like sitting on the couch and watching a show with them. I enjoy basically doing anything with them just because I like their presence. That's what I mean.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
Like, how do you feel? Does their presence feel additive to you? Does it feel like you just are happier with their presence than you would be without their presence? And sometimes people feel like, oh, we have such a strong relationship. We're so drawn to each other. But what you're drawn to is when you're with each other, the presence is volatile. It's either like the high highs and the low lows.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I didn't see that at first. Or that person yells a lot. I didn't notice that at first. And you're like, how did I get into this exact situation that hurt me as a child? And that's because your unconscious is saying – You look familiar. Come closer. Because what we're trying to do is we're trying to win. We're trying to master a situation where we felt helpless as a child.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And that's not, you know, I'm talking about that sense of contentment just being in the other person's presence. the dailiness of it.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So instead of love languages, I look at it as understanding each other's operating instructions. We don't get a manual like when you get it by a car or a piece of technology, right? It comes with operating instructions. So you know exactly how it works. Like don't push this button. Do push this button. This makes it run more smoothly. This will destroy it. Okay. Right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
So you understand those things. So we don't know that about the other person. Like, we make so many assumptions. You know, if this person is coming to me to talk about this, here's what I would want in that situation. So we do that, and the person's like, no, no, no, I came to talk to you about it. I just wanted to vent. I didn't come for you to fix it. Right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
But maybe you like it when people fix it. So you have to learn the other person's operating instructions. So we talk about this idea of love languages. People like all those things, as you said. Right? Operating instructions is something so much deeper and more intimate, which is I understand that being late means this to you, right?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
I understand that it helps you when you're anxious if my voice gets quieter instead of, you know, I understand that you need a hug in this moment, right? I understand that when we're going on a trip, you like to pack this way and I like to pack this way and let's do it our own ways, right? Or just like I understand these things about you and you understand these things about me.
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
And so if we understand them, we know how the other person operates and we're going to operate ourselves with an eye toward that. And there's something so loving about understanding somebody's operating instructions and honoring them, right? And we don't try to figure out the other person. We try to think, like, why are they acting that way?
Huberman Lab
How to Find & Be a Great Romantic Partner | Lori Gottlieb
We don't get curious and ask, hey, why are you acting that way? What's going on? And you learn then, oh, well, this is why. And then now you know that in those situations, here's how they can go more smoothly.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
If it's a romantic relationship, hold hands. It's really hard to argue. It actually calms your nervous systems. Just hold hands as you're having the conversation. It's so lovely.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
you are exactly where you need to be if you are doing the work. If you're not doing the work, you're going to be behind. And what I mean by doing the work is if you are not in a place where you want to be with a relationship, you have to understand why. So are you examining what has not worked yet? If I am single and I don't want to be single, what can I be doing differently?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
And so I think that's the important work. So you're not behind at all. In fact, you're probably ahead of people who are in relationships who have not done the work and maybe aren't in the right relationship or are in a relationship that's not going to last or isn't going well.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
I think it's so much easier when we talk to our friends and, you know, I've talked about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion before. Idiot compassion is you say to your friend, look what happened on this date or look what happened with this person. And they say, yeah, you're right. They're wrong. And we never learn or grow from that. Right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
Because yes, there might be something that the other person did, but also what was your role in that interaction? A relationship is all about relating. So what was your role in the dance that you're doing with this person?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
And what you get in therapy is you get wise compassion where we hold up a mirror to you and we help you to see something about, you know, what your role is, maybe something you haven't been willing or able to see, but that's so important. So you don't repeat that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
These situations where you're in this pattern and then you wonder, why do I keep ending up with a person who doesn't listen to me or a person where I don't feel seen or where I can't be myself or where we have a lot of volatility or where this person's really avoidant? Why am I always with people who avoid or what makes me avoid? And I don't talk to the person about what I want or what I need.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
So that's the work that's really important. So you're not behind if you're single at 28. It's part of the process. If you're doing the work, you're much closer than you've ever been to finding the person that you want to be with.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
We have this saying, we marry our unfinished business. We date our unfinished business too. So if you, let's say earlier in your life, you were around someone who, you know, was neglectful, somebody who drank too much, somebody who lost their temper, somebody who wasn't honest, somebody who wasn't reliable. We think when we're dating as adults, like I want the opposite of that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
I want someone where I feel safe, secure, there's trust. But what happens is And unconsciously, again, if we haven't done the work, our unfinished business, we actually are unconscious as, oh, you look familiar, come closer. So on the surface, they don't look like that person. But then when you get to know them, you're a month in, you're three months in, you're six months in, you think,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
wow, that person reminds me of someone. This person feels so familiar. And that's why I was drawn to this person. It turns out this person is very much like what I grew up with, is very much like the person who hurt me growing up. So if you do the work, you're able to see, oh, that person, I see why I'm drawn to them, but I'm not drawn to them in a healthy way.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
And then if you do even more work, you're not even drawn to those people anymore. Now you're drawn to healthy people, stable people, flexible people, emotionally generous people, people whose values align with yours. That's who you're drawn to. So you have to do the work.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
I think the future tripping is being in the present. And what I mean is what's happening now is what it's gonna look like in the future. So instead of imagining, oh, this person will change in this way, or we're gonna have this kind of life, but you don't know if the other person wants that kind of life. If you're not talking about it now in the present, you don't know.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
How does this person treat me now? What is it like when we're together? The biggest indicator would be we had a disagreement. How did we get through it? That's what your future is going to look like. We didn't agree on this. We were frustrated with each other. We had a difference of opinion. How did we repair that rupture? We talk a lot about rupture and repair. Everybody's going to have ruptures.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
You have it with your family members, with your friends, with your coworkers, with your parents, with your children, especially with your romantic partners, because we have this misguided notion that we shouldn't have a rupture with them. because we're so in love and we see each other and we see eye to eye, but of course you're going to have ruptures.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
It's not so much whether you're going to have a rupture, it's what do you do with it? And what does it look like? So if you have been dating for, let's say six months and you haven't had a rupture, you guys are not going deep enough. You guys don't know each other well enough. You're still on your best behavior. You have to be able to be yourselves.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
That's going to tell you what the future looks like. So stop the pretending, be yourself, be what you want your future to look like, act like you want your future to look like, see how the other person acts and see what happens between the two of you. And a repair would look like something like, oh, I didn't, you know, we're having a disagreement right now.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
Why don't we take 15 minutes and let's come back when we're not so heated and let's talk about that. Or, you know, you made a mistake. You know what? I've been thinking about this. You know, say you have an argument. You say, we're not going to talk for a few minutes. Let's go cool off, whatever. You call them back and you say, you know what? I thought about it. I was wrong. And I'm so sorry.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
Here's what I did. And I wish I had done it this way. And that's great if your partner can do that or if you can do that, right? And then if your partner then can accept that without shaming you, if your partner can say, I really appreciate that. And I wish that I had reacted differently in this way. And how can I be more supportive in those moments? That's beautiful. That's your future.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Jay’s Must-Listens: 6 Love Experts Reveal How to Finally Attract the Right Relationship! Featuring Joe Dispenza & Lori Gottlieb
but you have to see it in the present. You can't imagine what the future is going to be. You have to actually live it in the present and say, oh, now I know it's going to be just like it is right now.