Heart Versus Head
A podcast that helps couples fight better and connect again.
Heart Versus Head
There's Some Good Stuff Too, Right?
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In this episode, Randy and Beverly discuss how relationships are often seen as "bad" in a moment when a broader view might help both partners see things a little differently. When relationships encounter trouble, the human brain goes into protection mode and notices all the bad stuff, while almost completely ignoring the good stuff. Plus, in this episode, you get to learn the word agathokakological and see if your relationship is like a Florida Neighborhood Watch Program.
Heart Versus Head is a podcast about relationship styles and how those relationship styles influence communication in the most important relationships. The hosts - Randy Hampton and Beverly Craddock - are a married couple who are sought-after relationship coaches, award-winning authors and regular people who (like everyone in relationships) are just trying to stay connected through all the noise of life in the modern world. You can learn more about the couple and their work at HeartAndHeadCoaching.com, where you'll learn to fight better and connect again.
Welcome to Heart vs. Head, a podcast that helps couples communicate and fight better. Here are your hosts, Randi Hampton and Beverly Craddock.
SPEAKER_01:Today I want to talk about something that a client brought in last week and I've had it many times before that as well. This client is a heart like me and she was talking about her relationship. She was saying that she's really not happy and her problem is that she notices on social media that other couples are happier or it seems like her partner doesn't do as many things or provide as many needs as she would like. And so I asked her, I said, okay, I understand. I hear that. Out of 100, what percentage, what number would you say your relationship is like compared to others or what?
SPEAKER_02:Perception of others
SPEAKER_01:would be? Right. Well, if you take
SPEAKER_02:it as a percentage, 50 is average. That's the way my brain as a sociologist works. I go, okay, well, 50 is average. If you're above 50, maybe you're doing pretty good.
SPEAKER_01:So would love to hear from listeners on this one. We have an email address if you have questions, want to weigh
SPEAKER_02:in. Info at heartandheadcoaching.com. Info at heartandheadcoaching.com.
SPEAKER_01:Her take on that was that she was pretty shocked about that. She had never thought about anything less than 90, maybe 80% in her relationship. And when we started talking about what if 50 is just the average? What if 50 is... That point that we look at and anything above 50, then we feel like we're pretty good or we're building
SPEAKER_02:or we're growing. relationships that are somehow the good Okay, if you're at 50% of that, that's still 75. Always at that, oh, well, things are 80%. I think our brain tricks us. It just convinces us that somehow we're worse than we thought when we compare to other people. We're worse than we thought when we look at it ourselves. And there's a reason the brain does that.
SPEAKER_01:Also, I think the idea of anything above 50 is a good start is that everything about humans is good and bad. There are parts of my life as a mother, for example. There are parts of my mothering skills that were excellent, but there were also parts that weren't. As a human, we have strengths, we have weaknesses. And so as a person, whether it's a parenting role, or even if it's a job, I like to think that I'm really good at my job better than maybe a 50 50, meaning 50% good, but 50% struggle. But then when it comes to a relationship, how do we quantify that percentage? And I think that if we're fair, I think we would say our partner is somewhere around that 50-50 mark. There's a lot of good that I see in Randy and I's relationship. There's also things that we still are working on, or even things that perhaps we struggle with.
SPEAKER_02:Sure, I think that's true. But that's true with every couple. You're going to have the good and the bad. What's the Greek word for that? Agathococological, I think. It was actually a British poet that came up with the word. But agathococological is things that are composed of both good and evil. And there's always this in our relationship. There's the good and the And that's just relationships. That's just any human interaction. There's always good and bad. We talk about it when we talk about kids, you know, having children and everybody goes, children. And then they put in the work and they go, oh, kids, that's a lot. There's always good and bad in that kind of stuff. But in a relationship, our brain is just looking at the problems. It's looking for the trouble because that's its job. It's sitting in there trying to protect us. So it always sees the bad. And I think the The other point
SPEAKER_01:would be that a relationship, if it was shooting for 90%, that's a lot of pressure. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:moments and we have days and and there are days i can tell you i'm a i'm a 20 partner there are days and beverly can tell you all of those 20 days there's just days where they're tough days where something's going on physically or or somebody's crappy to me and something that's that's completely not even related to beverly i'll get an email from somebody that the that's on a project i'm working with them on or something like that and then i'm having a bad day and i'm turn it into the cranky, you know, 20% partner that's not paying attention when Beverly's talking. You just, I think you, you hope that, As a partner, I hope that there are more 90% days than there are 20% days, and it's certainly what we're all shooting for.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. We don't start out the morning, oh, I'm going for a 10% today. Now, I might look at my week and say to my partner, I've got a lot of work to do this weekend. I'm not going to be around. I'm not going to be able to do things with you or hang out or maybe do much, but eat and get through my work schedule. And in that case, we allow for that, right? You know, we allow our partner those times where they've got to balance out their life with other things. And we know that they're a 10% maybe during that time period. I think the realistic view of relationships being not 90, not 80, but maybe 60 or 70 is very enlightening and Because if we have that high goal, we're going to walk around and feel like we're not hitting it, our partner's not hitting it, and we're going to feel like a failure. And like Randy said, our mind does focus on that negative. I think it's the difference between the cup half full, the cup half empty, that if we look at it, that 50 is the average or the balance point, then anything we get above that is gravy. It's really good. The other thing that people ask me is, well, then I feel like I'm settling. If I look at my partner and I'm like, well, he's a 55. Right. And I understand that. Perhaps that person doesn't put in a lot of effort. However, maybe have a conversation. I wouldn't go to the person and say, hey, you're a 55 out of 100. Can you step it up?
SPEAKER_02:Wait, this isn't Yelp reviews for partners? No. That's awesome. We need to make that app the rate your partner app. And then we could actually work out the average over time and then people would know what their partner is. With thousands of people.
SPEAKER_01:Because it does change over time. I think satisfaction is a moving target. It depends on that week, that year, that chapter. Kids, no kids. I mean, there's so many different moving pieces that have an impact on satisfaction. Back to the partner at 55%. If you have a conversation, it would be good to touch base with what is their expectation? How do they feel? Maybe ask, well, what percentage would you give me? Start with that. You know, read an article on relationship satisfaction and say, hey, this was interesting. And I'm wondering, how would you rate me as a partner? How satisfied are you? It's funny, because I've been Based on all the hundreds and thousands of couples we've worked with, I think heads would normally give a higher number. I think a head would say their heart partner was closer maybe to an 80%.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. I think as a head partner, I look at our relationship and I go, it's a 95. It's so good that I don't worry about the 5%. But maybe that's a head. I don't know. Where do you put our relationship, Beverly? This is the most dangerous question I've asked on this podcast. Could be the last question I ask on this podcast. Beverly, where's our relationship? If I say it's at a 95, what are your thoughts as a heart?
SPEAKER_01:I would say probably about a 90, not as high as yours. I think that's in line with most hearts. I think hearts have that higher expectation, higher number. I think we have that naturally. And what What we don't realize is it's not that realistic, and we don't think about all the other different components that factor into relationship satisfaction. Things like how well we communicate, do I trust this person, how close we are, what's our intimacy or sex life, or even just how we handle conflicts together. All of those things can weigh in, as well as parenting and are they a good dad, a good parent. a lot of those things will actually factor into relationship satisfaction. So it's very subjective and different for everyone. I do think that hearts do have a lower number or they feel dissatisfied. And sometimes they need reminded to look at the whole picture. I
SPEAKER_02:was reading an article the other day about astronauts. And when they return to Earth, there's this, and I don't remember the word, for it, but there's a shift... In how they view humanity, really. And I think that's kind of the perspective shift we're talking about is if you step back and you go, okay, this partner, the partner that's pissing me off right now, this partner actually is a good dad or a good mom and is certainly a good friend to their friends and cares for me and they do make me dinner. and smile at me sometimes. And when you start to take a look at that bigger picture, maybe it gets a little easier. Beverly is correct. Hearts are definitely... Definitely tougher graders of the relationship than heads are, but it's okay. I'm such a tough grader that I would say I'm probably a 75% partner. And so when you say 90, my brain goes, woohoo, we're killing it. And so that's maybe just my take on it.
SPEAKER_01:It is interesting to look at hearts and heads and how they view their relationships differently to have those communications with each other to talk about if there are areas that you want to improve then you know find ways that you can do that to to grow and talk about your partner about that see if they have an interest in that if a partner doesn't want to do any additional work if they're satisfied and don't see the point in it then that might be an area of concern but Yeah. that Randy and I score so highly in our satisfaction. One reason is because even the little things, the quote bad in our relationship is not that bad, but stuff that we've talked about, stuff that I understand, stuff that has a very low level of frustration. And so it really lets that score be much higher. I think sometimes when clients come in, If there's something like an addiction issue, for example, that can be very draining and it can pull that number down, I think.
SPEAKER_02:I think, too, that there are life moments that lessen those numbers. The thing you really have to keep in mind, though, is your brain is looking for trouble. It's not looking for amazing. And so... We see the trouble so easily. We see the arguments, but we don't notice that for three hours before the argument, we were joking, laughing, sitting at peace with one another. We notice the blowups and stuff. I guess I'll round this out with a quick story, a study I saw years ago about a neighborhood watch program in Florida. And the neighborhood was having all the typical kind of neighborhood problems, you know, people breaking into cars and doing stuff. And so the neighborhood said, okay, we're going to set up a neighborhood watch. And they did. And immediately things got better. They had people wandering around at night and in teams and making sure that there weren't problems and things. And everybody kind of got their assigned nights and it was working out really well. And the crime that they were so concerned about had gone down. But over time, people started complaining about the neighborhood watch and wanting it gone. And the neighborhood eventually disbanded their neighborhood watch because despite the fact that they had had that success, the people in the neighborhood watch, when there were no more people breaking into cars and stealing catalytic converters to look for, the neighborhood watch people got bored. And so they were doing things like measuring people's grass or yelling at some jogger for cutting across the street at four o'clock in the morning and not using the And so eventually the neighborhood watch just became the nanny police of the neighborhood. And I think sometimes that's how our brain works when it comes to this kind of stuff. Even when there are no problems, when our relationship is magical, our brain is looking for these problems to solve. It's got to fix something. That's its job. And so recognize that the negative scoring stuff in this course. Anything you want to
SPEAKER_01:add before we get out of here, Beverly? Just remember that if a relationship is less than 100%, less than 90% perhaps, much of our world is the same. Sometimes we think about other people or politics or even art. You can stand and look at a piece of art and it can be, I love this, but I hate this. that? How many times do we read something on the internet or social media and it's like, oh, I love this, but I don't like that. So a lot of our world is good and bad, good and evil. And it's really that balance that we're looking at. And when it comes to relationship satisfaction, I think you need to take into account the whole picture. Sometimes we feel dissatisfied. But if we really think about it or make a list, maybe the pros and cons of this relationship, a lot of times I think the numbers will add up a lot higher than if we just focus on, like Randy said, that one or two things that still are out there that aren't 100%.
SPEAKER_02:All right. That's it for this time around the pod. Thank you, Beverly. Thank you. Always fun. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to Heart vs. Head. You can learn more at heartandheadcoaching.com and check out new podcast episodes every Wednesday. If you have a question for Randy and Beverly, send an email to info at heartandheadcoaching.com.
