Snippet 3 - How To Be Better At Long-Term Relationships: Logan Ury

Ali Abdaal 0:00 This is a clip from my interview with Logan Urie, the behavioural scientist turned relationships therapist turn best selling author of the book, How to not die alone. And in this clip Logan is sharing her tips on how to become better at relationships and how to be a better life partner, we might think that we shouldn't need a video or a book explaining how to be better at relationships and how to be better at love, because that's something that should come naturally and instinctively, to us. But clearly, you know, 50% of marriages end in divorce loads of people struggling relationships, clearly there, there is a need for education on the topic. This is a fantastic book, by the way, and you should definitely check out my full interview with Logan. But here's a clip on how to be better at relationships, let's go, Logan Ury 0:32 how to be a better life partner. So some of it is just knowing yourself and knowing your stuff. So what keeps you in the safe zone where you're happy? You're confident I like this word that I mentioned called confident. It's when you're calm and confident. How do you stay in your confident mode? And what are your triggers. So for some people, let's say they're anxiously attached, their trigger is when their partner is travelling and isn't in touch, they get upset and they move into the danger zone. So what I would recommend to that person is know your triggers, know what you need and learn how to ask for it. So really, part one is going deep inside yourself and knowing yourself and doing the work. Another thing is learning how to have hard conversations. So sometimes people say to me, Oh, I met this guy we're getting along so well, we never fight. That's not something that I think you need to optimise for lots of very happy couples fight fighting is about being passionate. My mother in law, who's a therapist says, When couples tell me they don't fight, I also say Do you not have sex? Because for her in her mind, those things go along. It's about having friction and working through stuff. So learning how to have hard conversations, learning how to say things like, I'm sure you're familiar with nonviolent communication. But when you the moments, I'm like, Oh, really? Yeah, I love NBC. I use it all the time. So for people who aren't familiar with it, it's a framework for expressing yourself in a way that helps you get heard and helps you kind of speak in a way that really expresses what's going on for you. So the format is, when you insert a specific thing that happened, I felt, and you have to use an emotion word. So it can't be something that's judging them like I felt left behind, it would be something like I felt sad, I felt enraged, I felt depressed, whatever it was, because of my need for blank. So you explain to them why this matters. So recently, I had this in a work conversation where I said, when I wasn't part of that decision making, it made me feel sad because of my need for inclusion. And then you say in the future, I request that you blank, and you say a specific request that they can agree to or talk to you about. So just learning things like that, like how to communicate how to stand up for yourself how to have boundaries, all of that is super important. Another one is what we talked about earlier around bids, so making bids to connect with your partner and turning towards their bed. So if you are working really hard and your partner clearly wants to talk, do you make a choice to close down your laptop and talk? Or do you say not now I'm in the middle of editing and I'm in a flow state? Or maybe you can just say I'd love to hear that story? Can we talk in 20 minutes. And so the small decisions that you're making, and I think another one that we haven't talked about that much is sex. Dan Savage has this concept of G G, G, this is his secrets to good sex, so it's good, which means being skillful. How can you develop your sexual skills? Giving? How can you be generous in bed and game? How can you be willing to experiment or give your partner what they want, within reason? And so I would also invest in learning how your body works, how somebody else body works, asking for what they want giving feedback, because while some very happy relationships don't have great sex lives, for many people, that does matter, and how can you take your own sex life into your own hands? Transcribed by https://otter.ai