The Habit Architect

THA S02 EP#26 - Get Curious Instead of Furious: What hard conversations can build

• Season 2 • Episode 26

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Long-term relationships do not usually break down because one conversation goes badly. They break down when tension gets buried, resentment builds quietly, and people stop returning to the hard conversations that could have created more understanding, trust, and connection.

In this episode of The Habit Architect, host Michael Cupps sits down with Russ and Danielle West of Intentional Marriages to talk about the habits that help relationships last. Drawing from decades in corporate sales, years of counseling, and their work mentoring hundreds of couples, Russ and Danielle explain why conflict is not the real problem. The bigger issue is what happens after the tension shows up. Do we shut down, push harder, walk away for good, or learn how to pause, come back, and repair? 

They unpack the nervous-system side of conflict, including how people get emotionally flooded and tend to respond with fight, flight, or freeze. Russ and Danielle describe their own dynamic as “tiger and turtle,” with one partner wanting to press in and solve things immediately while the other shuts down and needs time to process. Instead of treating that reaction as failure, they show why self-awareness is the starting point for healthier conversations. That is where one of the episode’s central ideas comes in: be curious, not furious. Rather than trying to win or prove a point, they encourage listeners to ask better questions, use phrases like “tell me more,” and listen as if they might be wrong. 

The conversation also explores how past experiences shape present reactions. Russ explains how old wounds and emotional memories can intensify present-day tension, making a small moment feel much bigger than it is. That insight opens the door to a larger point: strong relationships are not built by avoiding discomfort. They are built by learning how to work through hard things with honesty, vulnerability, and respect. Michael, Russ, and Danielle connect this not only to marriage, but also to leadership, teamwork, emotional intelligence, and the ability to solve problems well in any environment. 

This episode is for couples trying to communicate more clearly, leaders navigating tension at work, and anyone who wants to build stronger long-term relationships without pretending conflict should never happen. It is a grounded conversation about repair, emotional intelligence, and the courage it takes to stay engaged when things get hard.

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Michael:

Hello and welcome to the Habit Architect. My name's Michael Cups and I appreciate everybody watching and whether you're watching it live or whether you're watching it on replay. The guests today are fantastic. We've actually had them on the show before. They were one of the early guests of the Habit Architect, probably back in January, February of last year. Or maybe you're looking for a job and you're trying to get some training and you're trying to do this short term thinking. What we're gonna talk about today is really longer term things and what are those habits that make relationships successful? And we all have them. We, whether it's with a spouse, a husband, wife even family members, as well as in your workplace, you may have a long-term relationship with your boss.

Danielle:

Sure. My name is Danielle West and my husband Russ here. We've been in corporate sales for 20 years and or 20 to 30 years, but since we've left those fields, we've organically built a marriage ministry over the years and it wasn't because we thought we had arrived and we.

Russ:

Yeah. So in about 2012, we started doing this marriage mentoring part. I was doing it part-time, she was doing it full-time. I was doing nights and weekends, and it just kept growing and growing to where we're up to, almost 400 couples and about two years ago, yeah, I left the software industry and didn't been doing this full time for the last two years, but we've been doing it together for 12, since.

Michael:

Just like you said, Danielle, you go to you, you started going to therapists along the way and it helps, but that's why you started this because people do find hard times. And so let's talk about that. Co conflict is a number of things, right? It builds up over time, or it can be, we think of conflict though, as just a big argument, but it's really more than that, isn't it?

Danielle:

And with the, that kind of tension it, it gets into a vicious cycle. For us, I shut down when tension happens. Russ is more the tiger. I'm the turtle and unfortunately we get stuck in these vicious cycles. And so what happens for couples is you get into these cycles and eventually they get sick and tired of being in these cycles and they're like, there's gotta be a better way. So part of the problem of walking away is good. The pausing when tension happens, that's really good, but not coming back to it, that's the danger. It's bury radioactive waste. It's still in the land, air on the water, and over time when it's not addressed, resent.

Russ:

It doesn't mean they don't have a role in it. But the more intense it is, the more so we learned to get our role and then. We teach them how to understand why is their spouse's perspective so important, right? So try to understand their side of it, right? Seek to understand, instead of seek to win and or fight to understand instead of fight to win. And so we teach them to try to understand each other, understand themselves, and then understand each other, right? And then we teach them a re repair process so that when there is tension or conflict. We, like Danielle said, we, in the moment when you get flooded, you don't want to try to talk because your emotional brain is taking over, so it's good to pause.

Michael:

no, exactly. But Danielle, you coined the phrase I hear when we did a precall. You took, you said Be curious, not furious. And I think that's what you were just talking about, Russ. Is that right, Danielle? Is that the

Russ:

Yeah, Michael, that is one of the when someone says something we don't like or agree with, if we can learn that habit of, Hey, can you tell me more about how you got to that perspective or how that makes you feel, that is a game changer. Versus trying to convince them they shouldn't feel that way and that I'm right and you're wrong.

Michael:

Everything's good. Good advice. Yeah. So we start to unwind with the be curious and what do what, what happens in that process or what's your framework for walking couples through that, to from just that point of saying, okay, let's listen more and let's hear your perspective more.

Russ:

You don't have to agree with someone's perspective to, to let, to understand why they feel the way they do. And let me give you a quick personal example. Early in our marriage. Danielle, because of something that happened in middle school and through high school. At school, she hates to be ignored, right? You're never gonna agree on parenting, you're never gonna agree on how often to have sex. You're never, you're gonna agree on all the financial things of what to buy, and so in business it's same thing. Matter of fact, I was good. I thought about this when I was, and when you think about tension in the workplace, that can't be fixed, right? So that's just a tension that has to be managed. It wasn't a problem. It was gonna be fixed. Yeah. And so there's plenty. Yeah, exactly

Danielle:

Now I would come to him and say, that junk I have of feeling ignored, it comes up so easily tonight was really hard for me. And instead of him feeling attacked, he's oh, he leans in. He's oh, I'm so sorry. Could I have done anything differently this evening? And see over time, that for me has softened this filter that I see through.

Russ:

people want their perspective to be the one everybody goes with. And so we call that when you, if you can do that collaboration with respect, making people feel valued and respected and understood, then usually your best outcome is gonna come out of that, because it's gonna be a mixture of those perspectives. So our prefrontal cortex stores memories. As pictures, right? That's the logical part of our brain, right? It stores all the memories from our childhood and our past as pictures, but the amygdala, which is our fear threat system, stores memories as emotions with no pictures. So to your point, my father was an alcoholic and drug addict. The fear threat system. And so that is one thing that to me is what causes most tension and most conflict that we've seen in marriage or business.

Danielle:

And it's why we say later, I literally could not think of anything now for others. They may fight and they're more tiger like, and they want to verbally process and their anxiety goes up. If they're married to a turtle who's shutting down and the tiger's no, we need to fix this right away, their anxiety's going up. But the thing I want. People to know is yes, we want you to have hard, healthy conversations, but first, be self aware of what your nervous system is when it's in the moment, the immediate moment of tension. What is happening in your body. And then once you understand that and know I have to go away and I'm in a process, but I'm gonna promise to come back and tigers, you're gonna take a moment and pause and then come back, then you can have that hard, healthy conversation. That would, that meant shame. That meant you were probably getting divorced. That meant you weren't smart. Yeah. And so they avoided it completely. Then my generation comes along Gen X and we're like, oh, we're not gonna have that kind of marriage. I'm, I go once a week. I am so proud of that generation. And I had a, I had 15 girls that were in a small group had just graduated college, and this was 10 years ago. And I went, we were going around for introductions and each of 'em were, they either talked about their counseling experience or just their level of emotional intelligence.

Russ:

They say, our kids made us come see you. So I got divorced early on and I, it was because of my low emotional intelligence. And Satya Nadella, I love this. Satya Nadella, the CIO excuse me, the CEO Microsoft.

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because you said something in, in there again that said you, you quit.

Russ:

So what we do is we take a 70 30 positive situation with a relationship or job, and we make it feel. 60 40 negative. And what do we do? We leave, right? We And when and then when it was really this why did we do that? It's our emotions, our emotional intelligence is what causes this. Yeah. And so that, so what we, to help me. And it's gotta be someone who's objective that you can trust that's gonna be honest with you. And that has, we've had that. Put in place for any big decision we make. Like when I left my job two career to do this two years ago, we did that. We even gave 'em our finances and just everything and that, if all of a sudden the job really is 80 20 negative, it is 80 negative and 20 positive, or really is the relationship is that then you know, that's when you might be thinking about leaving.

Michael:

But even then, think about the things that we walk away from because it's not perfect. It's not 99% good. Exactly. And that, that ability to deal with a little un uncomfortable feeling, if we all think back to our times, some of the best times I've ever had in my life, things work perfect.

Danielle:

And part of the problem is deep relationships take time. And if you're. Leaving be, if you go through that honeymoon phase and then you hit the work phase you're never gonna have a meaningful relationship because you're always leaving. And I think part of it is social media and part of it is the Disney culture of it works out great in the movies.

Russ:

It's hard to do that. If we're not growing and growth takes working through hard things, hard relationships, hard conversations. And I'm gonna share a neat story. I didn't think about this till really, it just popped in my head. I've got a friend he's 80 years old now, and he was, he's been a CEO of five companies of over 500 million, right? And I just threw my pen down. I'm like, oh, I hate problems. And he goes, Russ, that's, I know that then I'm going to be able to build a customer for life, or an employee for life, by the way. I take care of their problem. And then as I was driving home from that lunch, I was thinking to myself, and you know what I realized, my best customer relationships.

Danielle:

Same.

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And it's it is that, that feeling of you're gonna lose something if you do it that way. It's practice. Yeah. You have to experience it and I think the problem solving answer is brilliant because especially now, I think. Our kids need to learn how to solve problems and we've, unfortunately, because I'm you guys are of my age as well, we tended to take care of things for our kids because we wanted 'em to be happy.

Russ:

So that's why emotional intelligence. Another reason why I think Satya Nadella said emotional intelligence is so important is because he knows that we're gonna be better problem solvers. In our, the higher our emotional intelligence.

Danielle:

We give them, our communication cycle, how it goes wrong and how it can go. We do that for an hour and then do 30 minutes of q and a. Okay. We also have had a marriage retreat where we do from, Friday night to Sunday where we bring in couples and do a more of a deep dive. And so you have access to that on the app. You have, let's say you're so tired of what should we do this weekend? I don't know where you, where do you wanna go? I don't know. Where do you wanna go? And we have it where you can put in your town. Your budget and your desire of what you wanna do, and it'll spit out local ideas for you within your budget. But yeah we're a little nonprofit. We're still working on, and it's

Michael:

Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. That's fantastic. Tell tell people where, how to find inter intentional marriages.

Danielle:

And so I have to, I've learned that I need to have an intense exercise to counterbalance that. Nice. And so I, in 2011. Started doing CrossFit and it is, I am addicted and I'm 59 almost to be 60. And I know people go, oh, CrossFit. But I have been really careful and it's a place that I can go every day and have fun with a community of people.

Michael:

Couples need it. We need it in our daily lives, how we work with people. Fantastic work. Thank you both for doing

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Michael Cupps

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