In her Power of Partnershipbook, Riane Eisler refers to the unraveling of complex domination patterns in our personal connections and intimate relations as “the heart of the matter.” Join us as renowned couples therapists and authors, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, share the transformative power of communication to resolve these complexities. Their unique process helps reshape communication from parallel monologues to shared listening and understanding that moves us from conflict to connection.
Center for Partnership Systems
Harville and Helen (home page)
Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body, Riane Eisler
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Riane Eisler
Faith and Feminism, A Holy Alliance, Helen LaKelly Hunt
In her Power of Partnershipbook, Riane Eisler refers to the unraveling of complex domination patterns in our personal connections and intimate relations as “the heart of the matter.” Join us as renowned couples therapists and authors, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, share the transformative power of communication to resolve these complexities. Their unique process helps reshape communication from parallel monologues to shared listening and understanding that moves us from conflict to connection.
Center for Partnership Systems
Harville and Helen (home page)
Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body, Riane Eisler
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Riane Eisler
Faith and Feminism, A Holy Alliance, Helen LaKelly Hunt
Welcome to the Power of Partnership podcast. I'm Rianne Eisler, president of the Center for Partnership Systems. This podcast brings you voices from the partnership movement, people who use partnership practices to build a world that values caring nature and shared prosperity. The Power of Partnership podcast is hosted by Cherry Jacobs Pruitt, a health policy and partnership scholar. Today, cherry interviews Harville Hendricks and Helen McKelley Hunt, internationally respected couples, therapists, educators, speakers and New York Times bestselling authors, on how we can use safe conversations to move from conflict to connection.
Speaker 2:Helen and Harville. Welcome and thank you so much for being guests on the Power of Partnership podcast. It is truly an honor to be able to meet you and provide this opportunity for our listeners to learn more about you and how your work has been informed and enriched by Rianne Eisler.
Speaker 3:Well, she and I were reading each other's work and I don't remember who reached out to the other first, but all we knew is, hey, we're all about partnership. Well, i've written a book, faith and Feminism, and Gloria Steinem was a real friend of mine, And so I had done some books on women's philanthropy. They're, at one point, only male Caucasian males were chairs of the boards of foundations, and Gloria knew I had started a women's foundation where I lived and because I learned about one in San Francisco. and now there are millions of them. And this is where Rianne, i'm sure, appreciated the inclusion of women in how money is distributed in the world. Women couldn't even like if someone with inherited wealth married a man. women were not allowed to go to banks to withdraw money. The husband had to go because they weren't. Rianne knows that the women women involved makes a real difference.
Speaker 5:And she knew that you were one of the major movers and shakers in the women's movement globally and written that book on faith and feminism. But you'd also started a whole bunch of foundations for women.
Speaker 3:I was in the women's hall of fame in Seneca Falls and I said it should not be me, it should be Gloria, it should be. and they said no, helen. and they insisted it because there was a group of us and I don't know why they chose me.
Speaker 5:Because you were worthy of it. But I just want to remind that parallel you and Rianne have been working with patterns of domination. Rianne, i think more in the culture at large you had focused exclusively on women, since that was half the people on the planet, and had made major contributions, both as an activist and as an author, to dealing with gender domination. So it's a very powerful subject and one that we ought not to have to talk about because we should be done with it. And I think the first place I discovered Rianne was actually long ago and didn't realize the significance of when her chalice and the blade came out. That was a really blockbuster and was really a powerful communication about the contrast between spirituality and the negative and war and domination and so forth. So she's been a force, i would say Helen, and I would say she's been a force in the culture. She's been a contributor to broadening our own perspective about what's going on at the local level with a couple.
Speaker 3:And the visionary about what is needed right now in the world.
Speaker 2:And so in your work, can you share with us where you see those patterns of domination or ways that the domination narrative plays out with the couples you work with?
Speaker 5:Yeah, It's an interesting phenomenon and Rianne was very luminous about the intensity of her use of the word domination and the polarization of that with partnership And so the way that, and so she helped enlarge what we were perceiving in couples but hadn't put into that language. Because what got clear to me and was helped by her is that couples' problems are not simply functions of their relationship or the inability to connect well or communicate well or whatever the diagnosis is, and that the problems are not rooted just totally in difficulties they had in childhood which they brought to the relationship, which was one of the levels and primary levels of diagnosis that couples reenact in their relationship the unresolved patterns that they had with their caretakers in childhood, so they don't know that they're living out their childhood in the relationship. But that is true, both of them is true. They're poor communication problems and there's also this intrusion into the present from the past. What began to get clear to us is that the interactions between partners also was an embodiment or expression of the value system, of the culture within which their parents had been reared, a culture which was then transmitted to the child and the child then unconsciously brought into their marriage later on. And then those values. Surprisingly, we learn later those are social values that are added on to the psychological problems that couples have anyway because of their just being with their parents. But the value system that the parents contribute to the child becomes embedded in them and then that value system works out, becomes operational in the marriage. So I want to be the best, i want the one, i'm the one to be right, i have to be in control, and so the cultural value systems become then the coin of exchange between partners. So they have the culture, their own childhood and their own relational lack of skills, so that couplehood is really a complex phenomenon made up of three layers of difficulty. We really assumed that the problems in couples were psychological. It was a surprise and a very luminous thing to know that you could help couples with their psychological memories and their psychological issues. But there was still something going on that had been brought into their marriage from the values of the culture, so that culture and psychology are implicated in the struggles that couples have to relate to each other. And Arian's book on partnership was a powerfully luminous piece in which she makes so clear there's a, there's a kind of verticality that was in the culture that gets transferred into the marriage from the culture And that's and that's is in the is in the early family, in the home, in the parenting, but that was also brought to the parents from the culture, so that the culture transcends the generations to show up in every marriage.
Speaker 2:When you're seeing these challenges of the domination narrative and really that entrenched cultural indoctrination towards domination in the, with the, within the couples that you're working with, how do you manage that challenge? How do you help change the narrative, help them understand that there is an alternative way, which is really what we would like to help everyone understand at all levels, from our most intimate relationships all the way to our relationships across the globe and even with the, the entire planet.
Speaker 3:When we were dating, we dated for a couple years before I proposed He he five years before you came, she keeps diminishing five years. He came over one night and we had what is called the hot relationship.
Speaker 5:Meaning. We fought a lot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that we had strong opinions and we were fighting and or having difference of opinion And I was shocked at his and he was shocked in mine. But then we kept expressing what we thought and then we were talking at the same time. And horrible credit It's me But I had sort of gotten this and you remembered it that I stood up, we were both sitting, we walked in the door and we were fighting and sat down and so far I kept fighting And and then I stood up and I said, horrible, hey, what of us talk and the other listen and then take turns, you talk and I'll listen. And so that calmed us down. And so that's what Harville means, that he was working with therapists. He took that idea and started sharing that idea with therapists who were frustrated in their lives together, and then that became what is called the dialogue process And there's, and so now our dialogue process. We teach worldwide. Right Now, the only someone told us that the only other person that has ever taught dialogue as well as we do was lived in 200, 300, 330 BC and his name was Socrates and he created Socrates, the cratic dialogue, and it disrupted the youth in Greece and he was put to death And not till then has dialogue been taught? And we and this was Harville's vision This should be taught in high school, this should be taught in college, and it should be taught before you get a marriage license, instead of like a driver's license. You have to take a test and if you can prove to use dialogue, you get your marriage license. Like a driver's license, you have to pass a test. So, anyway, that is the joy of our lives is teaching people to use dialogue, and and that's what keeps relationships healthy.
Speaker 5:So, and I want to, if I can, add to that a little bit about the. the short answer to what you asked is that we teach people to move from monologue, which is a vertical way of talking I'm the one talking to dialogue, which is we take turns talking. So the couples always come and they have an inequity in their relationship of some sort. It's not always a male domination and female. It could be female domination with the male. It's not, but it's a but. it is a dynamic that there is and it focuses less around gender, surprisingly in a marriage, and it does around who owns the truth, that is, who is and who owns the power in the relationship. Who is going to make the decisions and where are we going to live and how are we going to live and what are we going to do with our lives or whatever, and how do we parent, who's parenting styles? So there's that inequity And usually Helen you came up with the words that is called parallel monologue. Usually it's parallel monologue, which is what we were doing in your living room that night, one of us was talking, the other one talking while the other one was talking, while the other one was talking, and so what you have is what is considered chaos, and you don't even know what you're talking about anymore. You just know that you're yelling because you want your point of view out, and this is common, this is ordinary, and that it is a verticality. It is a form of I want to be in charge, which is a form of domination of your mind, domination of where are we going to eat dinner and what time are we going to eat dinner, and when are we going to make love, and all of that that somebody wants to be in charge of that And that the surprising- When you're finished. I want to make a point. Okay, and I'm sure I'd love to hear that But the surprising thing is that when we change the way couples talk, moving them from parallel monologue to dialogue and holding them in that structure where they had to get it that your partner's mind is different from yours, your partner's value system is different from yours And it's okay. Both are okay, both have their own value, which is equal. They're different but equal. That couples then, using the way they talk, begin to integrate equity into the relationship at levels that are different from the cultural domination, control, value system, but becomes a partner. They then become partners in the marriage. When they discover that I live with another person And I do, but I thought unconsciously I've been behaving as if I live with a copy of myself, and then she keeps saying stuff that I don't think then it's like what do we do with this? Well, we try to either extinguish it by criticizing it and putting it down, or you listen, and when you listen, you discover there's another world over here And it's a world that is amazing and wonderful and full. And when you let it in, you grow And something happens to the relationship, which is you experience this sense of partnership and safety and care for each other. And that's how we do that at the very practical level of changing the way couples talk, from monologue to dialogue.
Speaker 3:So you just said a word and that's what I wanna focus on the mind, change the mind. So we share with people a real brief conversation about the 2.8 pound organ that is in people's skull. That's the most considered by brain scientists, the most complicated organ in the universe. Basically, while very complicated, the brain can be seen as having two parts a lower brain, and we call it the crocodile brain, because its function is to keep you alive And it's gonna work no matter what. When you get up in the morning, you're hungry And you don't choose to be hungry. You're hungry And maybe you need coffee. That's not a choice, that it's your body telling you I need it. Thank God for the crocodile. It keeps you alive, it keeps you healthy, but it's the part that if someone disagrees with you, you can snap at them and go. That's wrong. So the other part of a person's head is the neocortex and we call it the wise owl. And when you use the synter stems of dialogue and take turns talking and listening, you have to choose what you're gonna say, and that puts you in the neocortex. And then is there more about that, which is part of the dialogue process, which puts you into the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex a state of wonder And it has relaxing neurochemicals of acetylcholine, norepinephrine, serotonin and their restful neurochemicals. You sleep better at night, as opposed to adrenaline and cortisol when you're monologuing. And then someone else sees it differently and they monologue, and so it's a healthy thing to do to learn how to have healthy relationships, and that is what Nian's work is, and we say we're born to be in relationship. We have them. So don't monologue your relationship. Use a part of your brain that's gonna make you sleep well at night by learning to use dialogue.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that's what we mean by healthy relationship is how you talk to each other. The exchange is an embodiment of health or pathology. So if you want to change any difficulties, change the way you talk. And when you change the way you talk, you change memories, you change experiences. Now, ultimately, if you do it long enough, you'll change the neuronal patterns in your brain. We decided about 10 years ago we could teach dialogue to everybody, that you didn't have to reserve dialogue for couples, but that it could become a cultural form of talking. We call it safe conversations, as when we move into the culture in the couples work, we call it Imago Dialogue, because that's the name of our couples therapy. But in the culture we use the same dialogue process, but call it safe conversations, and we strip all the therapeutic complexities of it and simply teach people how to have conversations in which they become dialogical, and with the same assumption that when two different people in two different organizations, two different religions, two political parties talk to each other dialogically, they move from who's right, who's wrong, who's better, who's more moral. Two there are two people here and there are two worlds interacting and those worlds are of equal value. So our goal with safe conversations is to teach it to the planet. We have a 30 year timeline, 30 year project, and our goal is to reach 3.2 billion people in the next 30 years with one thing talk dialogically and we'll show them how to do it, encourage them to do it, help them integrate it. And the reason is 3.2 billion is that that's the tipping point of the world's population in 2050. And in 2050, if we can reach that tipping point is it 2050,? yes, 2030 years, which is, yeah, 2050, the population would be 9.8 billion people right now at 7.2, i think It will move. You don't have to change everybody, but you have to change enough people that the cultural value changes And then, when it shifts, we call it, there's a collapse of the preceding structure, of the way people talk, the dominant, the culture of domination. When that collapses, then a rising out of the ashes, like the phoenix, is a new civilization, and this civilization will be one of equality, one of freedom, one of diversity and one of inclusion, and the mechanism of interaction will be dialogical. So that's what we are about and what we see Rian is also about the same thing, and we're on our paths to bring about not only some improvements in culture, but a transformation of culture itself, from the values of domination and control to the values of equality, inclusion, freedom and celebration of diversity. And we think that the dialogical process is the lever that can raise this world.
Speaker 1:Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Such admirable goals. We are so grateful for your presence on this world and that you have been inspired by Rian and are continuing to move us towards a partnership-oriented world. Thank you for listening to the Power of Partnership podcast. We're grateful to Rising Appalachia for the use of resilience as our Power of Partnership theme music. If you would like us to feature your partnership story or if you would like to be a proud sponsor of the Power of Partnership podcast, please contact us at center at partnershipwayorg. We hope you enjoyed this episode and will leave us a review on your favorite podcast channel, And don't forget to subscribe to be notified when new episodes are released. I'm Cherry Jacobs-Pruitt. See you next time on the Power of Partnership podcast.
Speaker 4:I am resilience. I trust the movement. I negate the chaos, uplift the negative. I'll show up at the table again and again, and again. How cause my mouth and learn to listen.