Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy podcast. We're so glad that you're here with us today. We're picking up from the last episode where we're continuing on with Gottman's seven principles. And in the last episode, we started with principle six, which is overcoming gridlock.
And we talked about the difference between solvable problems and perpetual problems in the episode before that, and how 69% of the problems in relationships are perpetual problems where they're not easily solved.
They're not just, hey, let's take a look at our schedule and schedule this in or let's solve this bedtime routine problem or hey let's make sure we clean out the basement and do this together right this overwhelm that you're feeling as a couple 31 of that is solvable problems but 69 is a huge chunk of these perpetual issues that just come up time and time again it's like that cycle that we're hitting again and again and it's exhausting to do that.
And sometimes those perpetual problems then lead to this gridlock where both partners feel hopeless and hurt and stuck and they feel like this resolving core conflict is not going to go away. I have no hope that we're going to solve this together. And in the last episode, I asked you to identify what is an issue that you feel gridlocked in your relationship. And today we're going to talk about steps to overcome that gridlock.
And so the first step that you want to take to overcome that gridlock is you want to identify the dreams that are inside of the conflict. And so to get a little deeper into that, gridlock often happens because a deep dream or a core value is embedded in the issue. For example, wanting to move to a big city might represent a dream of adventure, while staying in a small town might represent a dream of family closeness or stability.
And when you stop and you think about, okay, what is that deeper dream behind it? It, again, goes back to what we were talking about in the last episode. It helps you to gain empathy for your partner's perspective. And you might be able to look at that and say, man, moving to a big city sounds like nightmare fuel for me. Like I have zero interest or desire to go and do that.
But then when you understand, oh, your partner, man, they're a little bit more extroverted and being in the city and being in the thick of things and being able to just walk out your door and there's people outside all the time. That might sound very enticing for them. But for you, on the other hand, if maybe you're a little more introverted, you're like, man, I like to be out away from people. I don't like lots of cars. I don't like lots of activity. I don't need to be around a lot of people.
It can help you to understand what is the difference in why people might want something to be different. And again, you can get stuck into the gridlock and identify all these different problems and say, well, moving to the big city, there's more crime and there's more traffic and it's more expensive and all these different problems to try to bash your partner away from that idea.
But then that's not going to solve what their internal dream is, which is I might like it because it's more exciting, it's more interesting, there's more going on. And so when you understand really what is the main motivation behind what your partner wants, it helps you to have more empathy for their dream, even if you still end up disagreeing with what that end goal is. And so the action you want to take is to ask each other, what does this position
mean to you? Or what is the deeper need or dream that's at stake here for you? And again, this helps start the conversation as opposed to making arguments about why one is right or wrong, but trying to seek more deeply what is that internal motivation that's happening. And the result is that this can help shift the conversation from you're wrong, I'm right, to I need you to understand why this issue is important to me, or I want to understand why this issue is important to you.
And I think another core issue that often comes up is the differences in family. And if you want children or not, how big of a family that you want. And it can come from a place of fear. Like maybe you had a difficult childhood and you don't want to have children to put the children through the same thing you've been through. Or maybe you've been through a lot of abuse and you feel like there is no way I'm gonna bring a child into this world to put them through that.
Whereas your partner, on the other hand, maybe they want a big family. Maybe they want a lot of children and that may come from a dream, but it may also come from a fear, right? I was lonely as a child and I wanna make sure that we have a bigger family. But an example of this where you're able to identify not just the fears, but now you're looking for the dream. Right? Let's give the example of Lucy. Lucy's dream is I've always pictured a large,
close-knit family, and it's been a lifelong hope. This is something I've always wanted. Whereas her husband, Ethan, his dream is to provide well for his family. And his worry is that a bigger family means more stress and less personal attention to each child or less ability to provide for them as a whole.
And so when you come to this discussion and you're sitting down and you're talking through this very important issue to both of you, you want to first be able to identify what that dream is for the other person. So for Lucy, it's to have a big family, a close family. And for Ethan, it's to be able to provide for that family. And so it may seem like they're clashing because the bigger her family is,
the less he feels like he can provide for them. But as you sit down and you talk through this, you're able to see your partner's desires and their dreams. And instead of this right or wrong approach like Tim talked about, there's a depth of understanding and a depth of getting to know your partner and these deep-seated dreams. And I think, too, when we look at these two things, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.
So you can have a large, tight-knit family, but then you can also do a good job of providing for them and then making sure that each kid has the personal attention that they need. But it is something where there might need to be a deeper discussion on how would we manage that? What would that look like? And if we don't get to those deeper issues, then we're going to be missing an opportunity to connect and understand each other better.
So the next thing we're going to talk about is to soothe yourself and your partner. When we have discussions about entrenched issues, it can quickly trigger an emotional flooding or defensiveness. And so the action we need to take is if you're feeling overwhelmed, do some breathing exercises. Take a walk or listen to some calming music. Make sure your partner knows you're not just abandoning the conversation, you're just taking a pause for self-regulation.
And I always like to have my clients warn their partner and say, Listen, I want to take a little break or I want to take a pause from this conversation for a little bit.
And the reason you want to do that is because if you just walk away or you just disengage, stage they're going to think that you're stonewalling or they're going to think that you're just ending the conversation as opposed to I just want to take a little bit of break and I want to calm down a little bit or I want to emotionally regulate then it lets them know that the conversation is going to continue on after this but we're just going
to take a small hiatus here for a little bit now when you're taking that break though it's not like a day break a week break or a month break we're taking like five to 30 minute break from the conversation and then we're going to come back and try to re-engage in it and then if we are still out to gridlock, you definitely can take a longer pause and say, listen, can we talk about this next month? Or listen, can we talk about this later this week? Or something along those lines.
Because again, some of these longer term issues, it's not going to be solved through one or two conversations. And it's especially important to know that stance. So that's like, okay, we don't have to solve this now. But it's just we're continuing on this conversation. But definitely take that time to do some self soothing. If you're getting upset, or your partner's getting upset, you definitely don't want to say you're getting upset.
So why don't you go self-soothe? You want to say like, hey, I feel like it's getting heated. Let's take a little bit of a break so that we can work on regulating ourselves. And then let's talk again about it. You want to use more collective language when you're talking about taking a break and not you statements.
And the benefit of that is when you come back together and you can have this conversation, you're going to be able to be calmer and it's not going to be as heightened emotionally, which allows for more empathetic listening and less knee-jerk reactivity or defensiveness. Because when we're in these heightened situations, we're not responding. We are reacting, we're protecting.
And it's so important to take these moments to calm down. because once we're at a certain level of heightened engagement, it just continues to get more intense and more intense. Once you pass that threshold, rarely are you able to calm down on your own while somebody's yelling at you, right? Or you're having this intense conversation. So taking this pause allows you both to take a break.
Remember that you guys are on the same team and then you're going to come back together and the conversation has an opportunity and at least a chance to go smoother. So we focused a lot on the soothing part of it, making sure that you are calming yourself down, you're taking that break that you needed. But the step is to soothe and validate. So you want to make sure that in the process, you're also acknowledging the other person's emotional stakes in it, right?
So when we look at Lucy and Ethan again, you're able to validate Lucy's longing and her deep desire for this bigger family. And she's able to validate Ethan's fear of feeling overwhelmed or not being able to provide.
But that validation in understanding the other person's dreams as well as their fears is really important because so often I think we go into conversations and when we don't validate the other person doesn't really feel like you're hearing them or you're understanding where they're coming from and then we could be fighting about two totally different things and when we do that we're not able to come to a solution and so it really
is important to take the time to calm yourself down and then come back together and be able to really listen fully and validate where the other person is at. What are their dreams? What are their fears? And what are they experiencing? The next step, step three, is to reach a temporary compromise on the concrete elements. So even if maybe you still have a difference in that big dream that each of you has, you can still often find ways to compromise in your daily life.
So for example, when we look at Lucy and Ethan's story, they might agree that for now, we're just going to reevaluate finances or timing. Maybe we'll wait a year before we decide, or maybe we're going to talk about it in three months.
Right they have these regular check-ins where they're agreeing to revisit this important issue and maybe on this issue a year is too long right depending on your age and you feel like hey I don't have a lot of time we need to talk about this issue quicker then it is important to set up these regular check-ins like we talked about in the last episode but some of the compromises okay we're going to reevaluate finances we're going to figure out a plan for this but they
can also explore different ways once they start having children to share these tasks so he doesn't feel so overwhelmed and neither does she but that they are compromising on just practical daily life things and so i know we've talked a lot about like dreams and validating and what are your hopes and all of that but we also want to get down to practical steps for you to be able to compromise on things that are very concrete and you can see in your daily life.
Because as we do this, you can show each other that you're willing to yield and compromise on just the practical, maybe external parts of the conflict. Which then helps you to build that goodwill and trust between each other. Knowing that I'm not just trying to get my way or he's not just trying to get his way, but we're working through this together and we really are trying to find something that is great for our family.
The next one we're going to talk about exploring each other's deeper dreams more fully. So what you want to do is have a structured conversation where each partner talks about why they hold certain convictions, dreams or fears related to the conflict. And when you're having this discussion or when they are having their specific time, you can ask clarifying questions, but this isn't the time where we're challenging it.
And for sure, when they're first laying it out, you want to let them have the microphone and just speak about what it is that they have to say. And then you might write out questions as they're speaking, but then at the end, then ask them more directed or specific questions. Again, nothing to challenge it, but clarifying questions like, oh, can you explain this a little bit more to me? Or when you said this, can you explain a little more what you meant by that?
And again, the whole idea here is that this is an exploratory mission to understand more deeply what their dream is. And when you gain this emotional insight, it can help you find and create middle grounds for new ways to honor both of your dreams. So Lucy explains how she felt lonely as an only child and associates big family with love and security. Ethan shares that he grew up in a financial hardship, so security means limiting the family size.
They realize both are motivated by a need for safety and closeness, but they just express that in different ways. And so when we have that deeper exploration, that also can help us go back to temporary compromises. Like, for example, Lucy wants that bigger family, and then Ethan's worried about the financial stability and doesn't want to find himself in financial hardships. And so what that can look like is, okay, we have a child, and then we'll reassess
after each child and see, do we feel comfortable moving on? Are we feeling financially pressed? Should we hold off for a little bit longer? Okay, actually, we're feeling fine financially. Maybe we can look at having another child. And so this is an example, too, where this might be a multi-year conversation over the span of your guys' relationship, and then you're constantly reassessing.
But at the beginning of some of these discussions, you're not necessarily going to be able to have an actual answer. Sometimes you have to take steps in that direction and then figure out along the way, what do we keep doing or what do we shift or alter?
And the last step is to create an ongoing dialogue not just one-time solutions and then the last episode when we talked about pitfalls that you may encounter lack of check-ins was one of them this is so important to have these check-ins and have this ongoing dialogue because with solvable problems they're much quicker fixes but with these perpetual issues that then can lead to these gridlock issues, they're not as quick.
It's usually a longer-term dialogue that's happening because these issues that we're talking about are very important to us, right? They're core values. They're things that maybe as much as I want my way, I don't want him to give up on it because it is so important to him. And if he's going to just keep conceding because I want my way. Eventually he's going to be resentful and bitter. And so as much as I maybe do want the things that are so important to me.
In the long run, I wouldn't want him to give up a lot of these things that we could run into in these perpetual issues because it's going to bite us later on down the road. And so it is so important to have this continuous negotiation as our life changes. And so what you can do is to schedule these regular check-ins, whether it's monthly or quarterly, where you can revisit the gridlocked topic in a calmer, respectful, in a prepared way.
And this is different than your daily dialogue check-ins that we really encourage you guys to do on a daily or weekly basis. This is specifically where we're going to come back and we're going to talk about this gridlocked issue. We're going to talk about religion and we're going to talk about having children or where we're going to live long term. But it's beneficial because you know that this conversation is an open dialogue.
It's not something where we've thought about it and we're never going to come back to it because it's this off-limits topic. But as you have this regular check-ins, the partner that wants to talk about it isn't going to be as anxious because they know that there is a set time. We are going to revisit it. And the person that doesn't want to talk about it, this is really a good push or a good challenge for them to have a timeline where, hey, I know we're going to revisit this issue.
And as we have this ongoing dialogue, it doesn't force that yes or no decision right away. Those decisions that I really, in the long run, don't want Tim to make a decision and then regret or feel resentful later. But it's over time we're able to come to an agreement or come to some kind of solution. And maybe over that time, we're just kind of looking at potential solutions where it can meet both of our core needs.
It's not necessarily a one or the other. And so you don't want this one-time solution where you're backing your partner into a corner and forcing them to answer when they're really not ready, especially on these deeper issues. And so there is such an important piece to keeping that dialogue ongoing and open and safe. So Gottman's sixth principle, overcoming gridlock, reminds us that certain conflicts can't be solved in a traditional sense.
Instead, the path forward is about uncovering deeper dreams, practical practices, and showing empathy and finding the meaningful compromises where possible. We encourage you to pick up one gridlock issue. Maybe it's about moving houses, religious practices, or extended family boundaries, and approach it with these steps. Don't rush to fix everything at once. The journey is about understanding each other's inner world and building a more compassionate dialogue.
If you feel stuck, consider professional help. Therapists can help facilitate these sensitive discussions and help teach you strategies for emotional regulation, especially when it comes to gridlock triggers of past trauma or deeper-seated fears. And if even thinking about having these discussions, whether it's with a therapist or with your partner, feels like too much of a burden, that's when you might want to consider EMDR. are.
Ruth and I, through our program, Coaching with Truth, make ourselves available to you where we can work with you at helping you to overcome these challenging issues. If you're interested, we have a link in our description down below. In our next episode, we're going to be going over the seventh and final Gottman principle, which is creating shared meaning. All right, guys, we hope this episode was helpful for you. And as always, remember, your mind is a powerful thing.
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