Stronger Marriage Connection
It's often said that marriage takes work. The Stronger Marriage Connection podcast wants to help because a happy marriage is worth the effort. USU Family Life Professor Dr. Dave Schramm and Clinical Psychologist Dr. Liz Hale talk with experts about the principles and practices that will enhance your commitment, compassion, and emotional connection.
More than ever before, marriages face obstacles, from the busyness of work and daily hassles to disagreements and digital distractions. It's no wonder couples sometimes drift apart, growing resentful, lonely, and isolated.
The Utah Marriage Commission invites you to listen and discover new ways to strengthen and protect your marriage connection today!
Stronger Marriage Connection
A Candid Look at Emotional Reactivity | Jason Whiting | #145
Dr. Jason Whiting explores honesty, emotions, and relationship repair as foundational elements for building trust and connection in committed partnerships.
• Honesty is universally valued but challenging to maintain consistently in relationships
• Research shows people tell an average of three lies in ten minutes when first meeting someone new
• Emotions strongly influence how we perceive our partners and can turn them into "enemies" rather than allies
• Editing words to find truth rather than hiding it distinguishes authentic honesty from reactive "brutal honesty"
• Basic self-care practices like sleep, exercise, and nutrition significantly impact relationship quality
• Negotiated timeouts provide space to calm down before addressing relationship challenges
• Authenticity develops through consistent choices to be reflective rather than defensive
• Trust requires consistent effort to build and significant time to repair after betrayal
• Small, consistent acts of commitment build trust more effectively than grand gestures
Remember that trust is something that can be grown with consistent effort, and relationships thrive when we prioritize giving them quality time and attention.
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Dr. Dave Schramm:
Dr. Liz Hale:
On today's episode, dr Liz and I welcome to the show Dr Jason Whiting from BYU. Together, we dive into a great discussion about honesty, emotions and becoming more active and less reactive when we get triggered in relationships. We also discuss the importance of repairing relationships, including forgiveness, rebuilding trust and becoming more authentic in ourselves. Dr Jason Whiting is a professor in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Brigham Young University. His research projects have included federally funded initiatives to reduce abuse and strengthen marriage, and he is currently directing a qualitative exploration of healthy and unhealthy intimate relationship practices, as well as analyses of online discussions of abuse. In addition to his scholarly work, he has written for a general audience, including the book Love Me True Overcoming the Surprising Ways we Deceive in Relationships, and a blog on psychology. Today he teaches courses on addictions, violence and grounded theory research methods. In his free time, he reads books on a wide range of topics, plays racquetball and guitar, hangs out with his family and folds huge piles of laundry. We hope you enjoy the show. Hey there, friends.
Speaker 1:Welcome to another episode of Stronger Marriage Connection. I'm Dr Dave here at Utah State University, alongside Dr Liz Hale, our licensed clinical psychologist, our therapist, and we are aiming to bring you the very best that we have in research and resources, along with some tips and tools to help you create the marriage of your dreams. And today, so excited for our guest today. He is a friend, a colleague, a professor, marriage and family therapist at BYU, who I've known for probably a couple of decades at least, and I was probably the first one to buy and read his book called Love Me True, which we'll talk about later. He's here with us today to talk about trust and building closeness in relationships. Welcome to the show, dr Jason.
Speaker 2:Whitey, Thanks for having me. Dave Liz, it's good to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, excited for our discussion today. Jason, can we start things out today talking about honesty and trust and why it's foundational in committed relationships and why it's a challenge and struggle for many couples?
Speaker 2:It's a great question and it's such a big dimension. The last several years, I've been doing a large scale qualitative study where I've interviewed people from basically all over the world and I'm basically looking at the healthy things and the unhealthy things that happen in relationships, and it sounds like a really basic question, but we don't have a great typology of what are the essential things. Almost everyone would agree on that are that are good and and, conversely, the things that are doing damage. We have a lot of knowledge and we know things that are abusive or or good, but but I'm kind of working on what are the key dimensions.
Speaker 2:One of those is is being honest and, on the flip side of that, deception, and almost anyone would agree in those that we've talked to and we've talked to over 80 people honesty is helpful, deception is not helpful and, and, having said all that, we value it, but it's uh, it's not always easy. And so several years ago, when I was thinking about this very dimension, it just occurred to me that, as a therapist and I've been practicing now for pushing 30 years seemingly the problems that continue to arise seem to almost all be related in some way to either minimization or exaggeration, or bias or distortion or anger or some version of deception. It just is. We just get in these modes of not being authentic, not being true, not being accurate, not having integrity. So I just think it's a real key dimension. Having said that, it's not always easy to do, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even face value. Hey, be honest in your relationships. Oh okay, yeah. Yeah, it feels like almost a no-brainer, but as we dive in today, there's so much beneath the surface. I guess of yeah, just be honest and build trust right as a foundation. But like yeah, like you say, it's not always easy for couples.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that. One is that we are social animals. We are wired to want to put forth a certain image. We want to represent ourselves in certain ways especially. There's been some interesting research done. For example, they asked people to get to know each other. These were people that didn't know each other at all, like on a blind date, and they would just say here's 10 minutes talk. And then the interesting thing was, after the 10 minutes they reviewed the video and said was there anything in that discussion that you said that wasn't totally true? And, sure enough, over half of them said well, yeah, actually that wasn't true.
Speaker 2:And the average number of lies in 10 minutes was about three. That was the average. How about that? And it was silly stuff. It was stuff like, oh yeah, I really love that band, or oh, that's really interesting, or oh, I do this. I mean, it was kind of that kind of thing, the kind of stuff that we get a lot on social media. And that number actually went up in a subset of the participants where they said try to appear likable. So the people that were trying to appear likable actually were a little less honest and again we could get off on a whole different discussion about, like dating profiles and things like that, but it's, it's.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of deception and and um and so that's kind of a social version. But we also, like in our intimate relationships we we do things like avoid conflict, right, we don't love arguments. So we do things like say I'm fine when I may or may not be fine. We say yeah, you look great, or this dinner is delicious, or whatever we say, and sometimes that makes sense, these white lies. But we just are complicated social creatures and we also have a lot of bias and distortion with our emotions and things like that, which we'll probably get into a little bit. But when we represent ourselves in an argument, for example, we often say things like well, you said it like this, and we represent the other person with a worse tone than we do ourselves.
Speaker 2:In fact, this just reminded me of a kid I was meeting with. He was a college student and he was telling me about this argument he had with his girlfriend and he said, yeah, check this out. And he pulled out his phone and he started reading their texts and he read his text to her in this real calm voice and then he read her text in this like, like this aggressive, whiny tone, and I'm like that's funny, isn't it? That's what we do. I mean, these were just words, but he was portraying them in a way to advantage himself and there's a bunch of research that shows we kind of just do that naturally. So we're at a disadvantage in our relationships from from that kind of perspective. You just our own biases so, and you know there's other reasons, but those are some of the key key we become, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's funny we are so darn complicated, right. It's amazing. It's amazing how we date, how we find someone, how we marry, how we stay married. It really is quite something when you think about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. It's amazing Any of us make it at all, given that we're all different, and when you put two different people together in a relationship, the complexity just goes up exponentially. So it's not always easy, even in the best circumstances.
Speaker 3:Dr Whiting, sometimes people say and maybe this is what you were already referring to that they're being honest, when maybe they're just being reactive to something. But how do we tell the difference?
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, we have this tendency when we get hit with an emotion and we get reactive in relationships, we get defensive, there's disagreements. Again, a relationship inherently is going to have conflict because you have two different people and so if I get my buttons pushed I might say, well, I'm just being honest here, I'm just going to be brutally honest. But I'm probably just being brutal more than honest. I'm being reactive, right, and it takes a little while to see through that, because emotions kind of trick us into feeling like what's happening is true but it may or may not be, and it's one of the reasons people don't need to say everything they think in a relationship. I mean, can you imagine a relationship where somebody just said everything that came to the top of their head? Probably wouldn't be great, because and I say this in my book that partners need to edit their words, not to hide the truth, but to take the time to find it, because we have to let dust settle a little bit, we have to get to a better place. When we're stirred up, when we're feeling, you know, angry or defensive or sad, that colors what's happening and, like I said, in our own reactivities we might say something that's more just out of the emotion, like like I might. I might see my partner as the problem, but they might only be 12% of the problem and then I might also be hungry, or I had a bad exchange with somebody at work, or whatever it is. Maybe I have some of my own family of origin sensitivity. So it's just a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2:It's also one of the reasons why the advice to never go to bed angry is not always great advice, because you shouldn't try to solve your biggest and trickiest relationship problems when you're tired and angry. I mean so imagine sending your kid to go take the ACT at 1130 at night after they've been working all day and they're hungry and tired. I mean that's high-level cognitive work and sometimes we try to do high-level relationship work when we're at our worst and that's probably not going to end very well. You need to get to a pretty good place to do that kind of thing and not be in that reactive Great advice, thank you.
Speaker 1:Jason, let's dive a little bit deeper with these emotions and how it impacts how we see people as objects. Versus a person, versus my spouse All of a sudden, I get triggered or a hook, or again hungry, angry, lonely, tired or something that they say, and I react and I get defensive. All of these types of emotions because these emotions really do it changes. It alters Now how I see someone, and if I see them differently, then I treat them differently. It sends us in this unhealthy cycle that we're almost blind to, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:say, blindness is a good description, because if I'm in a bad space and I'm reacting out of my negative emotions, that's probably going to stir up negative emotions in my spouse and now we're in a cycle and that obviously is not going to end very well. So yeah, our emotions are strong and a lot of them are related to survival. They, you know, they keep us alive. They're, they're about threat and protection. So if I shift into a mode that is fight, flight or freeze, that is a protection mode. It's not a connection and nurturing and have a great time with someone mode. The problem is those aren't usually helpful in an intimate relationship. I mean, there are times in the worst of abusive relationships that somebody really is in threat for their own safety, but most of the time in our interactions we're not in some danger physically. We just get those triggers tripped and so we start feeling like, well, you're threatening me and my body shifts into this protection mode or a fight mode, and it varies between people what they tend to do. But that's not a good, you know, it's not a good way to connect. It paints the other person not just as a threat but as an enemy. So we're no longer partners working together on an issue like trying to solve a parenting problem or a money problem. Now we're adversaries and that's not going to go very well.
Speaker 2:And conversely, um research has found that when people are in good moods, even from artificial or other ways, they just tend to give each other a break. They tend to be in a better mode. There was one study where they went to a mall. You know, malls aren't as common these days, but they went to a mall and they went to people and they gave them gifts, little things like fingernail clippers. They said here you just have this gift. And then they would follow them.
Speaker 2:Psychologists are sneaky. And then they gave them a little survey and said we're just asking your opinion on how you're satisfied you are with your TV or your car. Well, guess what? The people that had the little gift rated higher on how satisfied they were with other life factors. Just little stuff. And then you've probably heard other research again, when people are in bad moods, there was a study of judges that would give more more likely to give parole after lunch than they were before lunch. Right, you've heard of that kind of thing, but it applies across other dimensions. Teachers grade more harshly, doctors are more likely to, you know, be a little less accurate in their diagnoses when they're not doing very well. So it just it. It paints us, it just colors our perception in a in a bigger way than we think. We just don't realize that it's happening is what what their reality is that we are just, after all and we're mortals, right?
Speaker 3:that's what it comes down to. Just humans, right?
Speaker 2:and we're emotionally humans, and we are just, after all, mere mortals. Right, that's what it comes down to Just humans. Right, we're humans and we're emotional humans yeah, and we're emotional.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about that next, about emotional regulation. Many of us, I think, struggle with strong emotions, again because of that human side. What are some specific tips or practices you offer to help us all stay grounded, especially in our relationships, when we discuss some of those hot topics, some of those topics that just trigger?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of the things that benefit our relationships are just the things that benefit us in our own wellness, for example. We do better, for example, when we are exercising, when we are getting our sleep, when we're eating regularly. You know just good life skills. Taking care of ourselves will, you know, benefit everybody. You know the old saying when mom ain't happy, nobody's happy. You know when one person's struggling, who's in a position in a family or a relationship, that will, you know, leak out and that's actually one of Gottman's findings too is that one of the big predictors of relationship failure is what he calls diffuse physiological arousal People that are just always ramped up because you just don't see the same. You say things and you do things when you're fired up that you wouldn't do when you're calm. Do when you're calm. So, exercise and self-care.
Speaker 2:We did a project when I worked at Texas Tech where we did a small intervention, a four-hour intervention for couples who were coming in who had abuse in their history psychological abuse or even physical violence of certain types and we taught them some skills. We taught them relationships skills and we also taught them what's called a negotiated timeout. And I was surprised when I did interviews afterwards that was the thing they mentioned the most, that was the most useful was the timeout. They just didn't still use it. They said we get a little frustrated, we do the timeout, we come back, we're a little bit in a better place, so, again, just calming down. So we live in a world with a lot of stress and tension and negativity. I think and I teach this to my students and my kids we need to take time to do things like exercise or mindfulness or stress reduction or taking breaks, so all those things will benefit relationships.
Speaker 3:Dave often says around here that healthy we is made up of two healthy me's. We just can't compromise that. It seems it's so crucial in our relationships how healthy we are.
Speaker 1:And then, I think, recognizing it too, jason, our good friend Wally Goddard. He likes to say irritation is an invitation for compassion or for slowing down or to try to see someone else's perspective, and people do things for reasons that make sense to them. He says so. I think it's not easy because it's not. Our first natural reaction is to bite back or to get defensive. I know, jason, when I'm feeling stressed, or even my wife is feeling stressed, that's not even related to our relationship, it's something outside, just our tolerance. Anything that she says or does, that is okay. I'm just more short in my response or my reaction to our kids or to her, when I'm not taking care of things, and it's hard to recognize it because I feel like stress kind of narrows our perspective. The broad and build theory of narrows our perspective, right, the broad and build theory of Barbara Fredrickson. When we're happy and positive and exercising and sleeping and all that, we can literally see things differently. We're more open. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Completely. Yeah, when we get irritated, we get stressed, we get overwhelmed, the tendency is to turn inward and, like you say, to see the other person as an irritation, as a problem. But really, if we're able to be mature and reflective, it is an invitation, like Wally says, to say what's going on here. Something is happening for you and the situation, and that's a higher level skill, I mean. That's that takes. You know there's a maturity to that that if you can do that, things are going to go better. You know, if you can kind of stop and it's kind of part of that honesty again saying what's really happening here, instead of shifting into like a reactive and that accountability right, Responsibility, accountability.
Speaker 2:Completely. Yeah, that's another one of those key dimensions that I'm studying right now is accountability versus defensiveness or making excuses. And again, couples, people who do this in their relationship are doing better. They do things like they apologize, they say you know, I was in a bad headspace, I shouldn't have done that. They don't make excuses, they own their stuff. If somebody does that in a relationship people, it invites the other person to do the same and then they tend to make progress. And again, we've probably all seen this Some people who are seemingly not able to be accountable but are always defensive or blaming or saying well, it's not me, it's you, or I was just stressed or I wouldn't have said this to you if you didn't do that.
Speaker 2:That's not healthy and it doesn't lead to change. It's also why one of the key things you do in an addiction recovery group or even a batterer intervention group in domestic violence, you start with accountability and you start with saying this is a problem and it's not somebody else's fault. Of course, there's stressors and everybody has their challenges, but we have to focus on the things that we can do, and that's where it starts. That's where change starts. And I just did another research project.
Speaker 2:This is with a doctoral student who was looking at attachment styles and her question was can attachment styles change? We talk a lot about how certain people that grow up with maybe an unhealthy situation have less security. They have insecure or anxious styles. But what she found was in some pretty in-depth interviews there are a lot of people that describe themselves as now much more secure than they used to be. But it took a lot of work. That was. The key takeaway was that they did things like therapy and journaling and reflecting and reading and owning and working on their stuff, and that's hard work. Some people do it, some people don't, and in couples the couples that you know work on stuff make progress and those that blame the other person not so much yeah, yeah, relationships take work.
Speaker 1:The self-awareness, those works, maturity, humility, all of this. We'll be right back after this brief message, and we're back, let's dive right in. Jason, I love your work on authenticity and we've both written a bit about this topic. Big fans of the Arbinger Institute and their resources, can you tell us how can people become more authentic? First, what does that mean to be authentic, which then leads to us being less reactive? And in my mind, jason, setting this up, I feel like this is one of the biggest challenges of a lifetime. Right Is to feel something but not follow it, or, in some cases, to feel it and follow it, but man to be authentic. What does that set that up for us?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, i's a. I think it's a life's work and I think it's such a important and key dimension in in the way we are with others. You know, one of one of my influences with this research project that I'm working on is this idea of strong relationality, and I've been reading some of the stuff you've done with Adam. You know on on what that means and the philosophers and thinkers that talk about how we are deeply, inextricably relational. That's where we get our identities, that's how we operate, and so authenticity is.
Speaker 2:In fact, there's a quote that I read not long ago I wish I had it for my book, but it was in a book by Richard Rohr, who's a Jesuit theologian, and he cites this other guy that says the natural habitat for truth is in intrapersonal relationships, and I thought about that for a while and the point he makes. He talks about how, in a relationship, we just have all these opportunities again and again to reflect on am I being honest, am I being accurate? Am I being fair or am I shifting into more of a selfish, biased, defensive stance? And again and again. Any relationship has dozens of interactions throughout a day, and in any one of those you can choose to be aggressive or annoyed, or you can choose to be kind and reflective and inaccurate and you can do things like we were saying earlier you can ask what the other person's perspective is or trying to figure out what's going on.
Speaker 2:That's the authentic, you know way to do things with integrity and um. So anyway, I just think it's our relationships that bring that out. And sometimes you meet those couples. They've been married 50, 60 years and they just have this sweet, deep connection. And you know those are the folks that have worked on this. You know they've been authentic, they've made adjustments, they've made repairs. And then sometimes you meet the ones that are not that way.
Speaker 2:They're just sort of irritated roommates that way they're just sort of irritated roommates and just kind of putting up with each other or they have gone their separate ways and and I think that that's one of the key differentiators is whether they have worked on that authenticity and that integrity you know. Back to your comment about it's a life's work, yeah it, it does, it feels like, uh, it's.
Speaker 1:I've kind of thought through all this work on authenticity and relationality that it's possible, jason, to feel irritated, to even be upset, to feel these strong emotions and still be kind. And I think that's the challenge of a lifestyle is to feel these strong emotions and still be kind and be true, and to be able to see another person and feel like, okay, yeah, this is hard for them, or just pause, it's the pause. And be like, okay, I'm not in a good space right now. I need to be more kind, but, man, it's a challenge, it's a challenge, it's a challenge.
Speaker 2:It's a challenge.
Speaker 2:One of the things I find myself saying with couples in my therapy practice. A lot is work on making those things overt, as in what you just described, like if I'm having a bad day or if I'm depressed or if I'm stressed out, for me to just say, you know what. I'm not in a great headspace right now. I need to come back to this. I'm finding myself getting really irritated or reactive to some things, so I need to take some time, or or I just I just need to make that, you know, clear, so that so that I'm not putting it on you, or then I'm not saying you're making me this way, but I'm just saying this is my experience. You know, it's kind of like the old I messages kind of thing. It's just owning my stuff and saying this is where I'm at and, um, you know I'll, I'll do the work on that and maybe you can help me with it, but maybe not. But that's just going on. I'm not going to try to put that off on you or someone else in a dishonest way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we blow it to come back and apologize. Be quick to apologize. Repair.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:What you're talking about is real, true vulnerability. Right that, this is me, this is on me, and I'm sure that is probably a very key role in building trust. How do we create safe spaces for sharing difficult truths in our relationships? What do you think, jason?
Speaker 2:That's the key word, right Safe spaces. Because if you're going to be vulnerable, you have to feel safe. And there are people that again have maybe past histories that make that harder for them. They might have to feel safe. And there are people that again have maybe past histories that make that harder for them. They might have to do some extra work. But if I'm in a relationship where I don't feel safe to share something, I'm going to get nailed or criticized or something that's the trust and the vulnerability is going to go down. So both people have to work on that and that's relevant.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'll get couples where one person is work on that and that's relevant. Like, sometimes, you know, I'll get couples where one person is working on it and the other person is not. One of the things I study is abuse and domestic violence and and that's heavy stuff um, it can be, it can be changed if people are willing to do some hard work, but both have to be willing, particularly people with greater power, particularly people that have been more aggressive. So, anyway, vulnerability is a good indicator of whether the relationship is in a healthy place or not, whether it's a safe place or not, and people create that through the kinds of things we've been discussing today, by being honest but also kind.
Speaker 3:So safety, there's a physical safety, there's an emotional safety.
Speaker 2:All that stuff is tied in together Physical safety, emotional safety, security. You know, knowing that I'm going to be, you know you're not going to say something behind my back or you're not going to be leaving me, that you're not going to be a Dr Jekyll, mr Hyde, that you know there's a commitment kind of safety. You know that you're not going to be a Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde, that there's a commitment kind of safety that you're not going to say something that I wouldn't be comfortable with you saying or that you're not going to be unfaithful to me emotionally, physically, intimately.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:So it's again a real key indicator of a lot of things going on in the relationship. It's really important. It's really connected to trust too, which we've been talking about.
Speaker 3:Yes, and when that trust is damaged by dishonesty or withholding important information, where do you start to repair?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a common thing. Trust gets damaged, sometimes in little ways, but sometimes in big, significant ways. I just had couples in the other day that were both recovering from affairs and we talked about this and there's an analogy. In fact, I have a student right now doing her thesis on commitment and betrayal. So that's one of these other key dimensions. And she brought me this interesting finding the other day. She said commitment is people are describing it as a lot of small but consistent efforts Trail. They're describing as more discrete events.
Speaker 2:You know this, my husband lied to me and my wife had an emotional affair. You know these things that do a lot of damage. So it's kind of like the analogy of you know you're growing this beautiful plant and it takes time. But if it's damaged, if somebody steps on that thing with a betrayal, that's now going to take not just some time but some nourishing and some repair. So you can't just snap it back into shape. And for somebody that's damaged trust, you can't just say, well, you just got to get over that. It's like saying, well, I'm sorry, I broke your arm, you just got to get over that. It's like saying, well, I'm sorry, I broke your arm, you just got to get over that. You know it's. It doesn't know how it works, so it takes. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort.
Speaker 3:And a lot of humility right, I suppose, on both parts, but especially on the one. Who's doing who's done the betraying?
Speaker 2:Right, and if that isn't there, there, I noticed that. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Jason, it's tradition here on our show that we ask all of our guests the following question. It's really the name of our podcast, Stronger Marriage Connection. In your mind, what is the key to a stronger marriage connection?
Speaker 2:Given our discussion today. But I would say this overall let's go with trust. That's a finding that Gottman and others have also focused on that if you're going to have a strong relationship, like I just said, some people will stay together without trust, but it's not going to be a particularly close or safe or vulnerable relationship. You want to have a strong connection, there's got to be trust. Strong connection, there's got to be trust. You've got to know that that person is deeply committed to you, that you can count on them, that they have your back, that they're not going to suddenly surprise you with some awful thing. So that takes work and it takes time, but, boy, it's worth having if you're going to have a strong, committed connection. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3:I like that, and please tell us, jason, where can our listeners go to find out more about you, your research you've done and any other helpful resources that you want to share with us, please?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I have a website, drjasonwhitingcom, and it has some resources and some information. I do a blog on psychology today fairly regularly. That's probably my biggest outlet where people can see some of the short form discussions of my research. As Dave mentioned, I have a book on this topic called Love Me True Overcoming the Surprising Ways we Deceive in Relationships, and it's also pretty easy to find me just on my BYU University website.
Speaker 3:That's a classic book. We will add these resources to our show notes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, jason. Another question we'd like to ask is, as we wrap up we call it a takeaway of the day Is there a take-home message that you want to emphasize you hope our listeners will remember from our discussion today?
Speaker 2:I would say remember that trust is something that can be grown. It just takes effort, and I think that's a takeaway message that's always a good reminder for relationships is that for most of us, we would say these are some of the highest priorities in our lives, but are they getting prime time? If you're spending quality and quantity time in your relationships, that trust is going to grow. If you are scattered and doing other stuff and spending all your time on Instagram or at work or whatever, that's not going to necessarily be nurturing of your relationship. So it takes a little work, but it's absolutely worth it.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is Liz. What about you? What's your takeaway today?
Speaker 3:I love how we sometimes say look, I'm just being brutally honest, right as if that was some wonderful trait I have, because really I'm just being brutal and I love what you said, jason, about editing our words to take the time to find it, not not hide it. That's really taking the time, to be honest. That's what that's about. They get that right, jason, am I saying yeah?
Speaker 2:to take the time to find the truth instead of hiding it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love it. It takes a little work to find the truth, I think I think that's really wise, instead of just being brutally honest, right, which takes no time, no effort. Right, it's just me speaking and and I'm trying to find a justification for it. Yeah, dave, what about you? What's the rich nugget? You hope that all of us remember, from our time to today, with dr jason lighting yeah, I think for me it's the emotions.
Speaker 1:the emotions part and jc talked about.
Speaker 1:It's like kicking up dust, you know, and then we can't see, we see the person differently and in my mind I like to think it's like there's almost like two versions, maybe multiple versions, versions of Dr Davis.
Speaker 1:Right, there's version one and version two, and when I move over to version two, it's not the real me. You know, when I get reactive or really disgusted or irritated or say, you know, my blood is pumping, that's not the real me. And the more I can be true to the real you right to version one, and when I feel it don't follow it, I can pause, catch myself, be like, ah, you know, I need a break. If I can vocalize that, say, man, you know, I am just really overwhelmed. It's probably not the best time to discuss this, whatever that is, before I flip to day version two. At the end of the day, yeah, there's a lifetime of work that I'm striving to do, but for me I think that that is learning to be more of a I call it emotional first responder respond to my emotions instead of a nuclear reactor, and react to those emotions. Jason, that's really helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually love that. I have a lot of discussions with people in therapy, with what you just said, which is trying to find the authentic real you, because so much happens which is not. It's coming from these reactive justifying places. Even people that have domestic violence pretty serious things don't usually do it because it feels good. That's not the real them. So there's treatments that work on getting reconnected with their compassion, with their values. Most people want to be good people and it feels good to be a good person. It doesn't feel good to be aggressive, to be deceptive, to be dishonest. So, anyway, just wanted to second what you said there, which is so much of healthy relationships is finding our best selves and most of us are good people. We just have to really find that and tap into it.
Speaker 3:that person, yeah, yeah it's also great for partners to remember maybe too right like I'm gonna give him a break. I know this. He's not his best self right now I get. I see him, I get him. I under the. I understand the pressure he's under.
Speaker 1:Um, that's probably good for us as well, right, totally yeah and not to take those the personal, like version two, too personal, because you know a lot of it is the adrenaline or the emotion coming out and be like, okay, I know that, yeah, this isn't the real person coming out, but, yeah, giving grace, this has been a fantastic discussion, jason, thanks so much for making time to come on and share with us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. It's been really fun discussion with you guys.
Speaker 1:All right, friends, that does it for us. We'll see you next time on another episode of the Stronger Marriage Connection podcast.
Speaker 3:And remember it's the small things that create a stronger marriage connection. Take good care of you and each other.
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