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This is the Art of Charm. Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life. Today we're talking again with Linda Carroll. She's a therapist and is very, very highly rated, especially by the AOC family who heard her earlier on the show. We're going to talk about something called the merge, which is when your brain is essentially drunk on its own chemicals.
does to your brain, what this does to relationships, how we can preemptively strike against the merge and make sure we're not making bad decisions in our relationships early on or later on. And we're gonna talk about something called loops, which we don't know when they set in, but once the chemicals wear off and loops are there, this is when things get really ugly. So let's learn how to avoid that, how to manage our relationships, and how to manage our brain chemicals here with Linda Carroll.
Welcome to The Art of Charm. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work. If you're new to the show, we'd love to send you some top episodes in the toolbox.
where we discuss body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, networking, negotiation, and everything else we teach here at AOC. Just text CHARMED to 33444, that's C-H-A-R-M-E-D, to 33444, or go to... theartofcharm.com. We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have some of the questions. Alright, here's Linda Carroll.
Linda, thanks for coming back. I really appreciate it. We had a great show last time talking about all things relationship-y, and there was a lot going on there that I wanted to touch base again on after Jason, of course, couldn't get enough of it, and now today he's moving, so he's not around.
back to Chicago so if you're in Chicago and you're listening to the show you can feel free to email producer Jason and take him out for maybe a green smoothie but Linda I'm glad to have you back I'd love to talk more about what you'd mentioned in the book, Love Cycles, namely the five essential stages of lasting love. Because many people have love in their lives, but not all of it lasts. Most of it maybe doesn't.
I think for people that have been married for a few decades, we have a lot to learn from those people, even if marriage is kind of getting out of fashion these days. Do you agree with that, by the way? Is marriage something that's antiquated that we don't need anymore, or is it just something that's gotten harder? I think that we do need it. It creates a certain kind of container. I think not all people need it, but I sure need it. It really helped me stay and helps me stay for many decades.
I think that what's different is we want something different now than people 30 or 40 years wanted. And so that's why it's harder if we didn't care about intimacy and people didn't care about sex when they're 70. or 80, which they are starting to. I mean, I'm getting clients and coaching clients and therapy clients who are coming in who are 70, 80. I had an 85-year-old couple recently.
who wanted to start their sex life. And when I was a kid, mostly people, they weren't even alive then in my mind, but they didn't think about sex as best I know. I'm sure a few did, but now we have all these books out about it and, you know, we want all kinds of intimacy. And they require different skills than what we once had. And that's why I'm so happy to be talking about loops and why falling in love isn't loving, because those are how we get into trouble.
That's part of the reason that we have so much trouble in marriage and in relationships. Well, that's a really interesting set of concepts that we can get into here on the show. Going back to how I usually start the show, tell us what you do in one sentence. Okay, I teach... And I learn and I talk and I write about love, about all different aspects of love, why we love who we love, why we stop loving.
why what's so great can turn so bad, sour, and how to make it better. What are the things we can do to get the love we want in our life to actually be sustaining and all that we think it can be? Some of the time, not all of the time, but a lot of the time. Good enough. Let's dive right into the five essential stages of lasting love. First of all, what are these stages and how did you come up with these? Are these things you invented through your work or are these well-known from prior work?
I didn't invent them. They're well known from all kinds of things. They're well known from biology, from science. Look at the seasons. Everything goes through cycles. Look at the waves of the ocean. So that's part of it is just looking at nature a lot. and thinking we are nature, and there's so much in our love relationships that are part of our biological systems and rhythms, and then looking at poetry.
opera and literature through the ages and stories, we are focused on stories about people who were in the first stage of love or in the disillusionment stage of love. But there are other stages and they're just not so dramatic. I don't want to say better, but they're not as dramatic, so they don't make good press. So the first stage, the merge, which is mediated by lots of hormones and chemicals and makes us essentially crazy.
When we fall in love, think about what that is. It's falling. We don't choose it. We see somebody and we're carried away and think that's it. And there's so many more reasons for that than that's the right person. You know, that feeling of... oh my God, that person over there, I've got to be with them, which we have been trained to see as romantic. It's actually a whole set of biological chemicals going off.
And smell is really important. All those things are happening to our bodies, but they are not necessarily a sign of relationship compatibility. So it takes a long time to know if somebody is the right person to be with because part of the chemicals that go off blind us. We go blind. to things to cues, red flags. But the merge is delicious. You know, you walk on air and you're out of yourself. You get over yourself. That's part of what's so wonderful about it.
So it's intoxicating, basically. It's intoxicating and everything looks good. And we stretch in all kinds of ways that we wouldn't normally. And we feel the drugs, the same drugs that go off in cocaine. an addiction of all kinds. Gambling, that's what we feel when we're near our lover. And that's the merge. It's the Hollywood story. I saw them. I knew it was for me. You know, we went off into the sunset.
Those stories don't talk about what happened after the sunset or they didn't for a long time. The second part is the power struggle, is what happens when the drugs start to wear off and the very things we fell in love with begin to annoy us. And we think, what am I doing here? This is not right. I thought it would always be good. We begin to notice things we hadn't noticed before, like how we're different from each other. That's the big one. People fall in love because they're so alike.
Part of what happens when we go into doubt is we see the ways that we're really different and we don't have the energy or the motivation, the biological motivation to stretch. I don't want to go backpacking anymore. You know, I don't want to go to hotels anymore, if that's my deal. And often people who love backpacking fall in love with somebody that loves hotels, who thinks the Four Seasons is a hotel. And then what happens is that...
In the second stage, the backpacker wants to go back to the woods and looks around at the hotel and says, awful. And the person who loves hotels and cities starts to notice the irritating fleas and flies and gnats that are out there. It's a normal stage and we go through it with everything. I was giving a talk once and a woman came up to me and said, I run a law firm for 70 people. And this is what lawyers talk about all the time. I fell in love with the law. I thought it was so exciting.
And now I realize I'm just writing papers and I wish I'd done something else. Right. How long does this phase last? Because it seems like everybody that I know probably knows a half dozen people like this where you see that your friends constantly in and out. of relationships and they're in new relationships all the time. And I see it happen with men and women all over, especially younger folks. But unfortunately, some people our age and older get stuck.
in these kind of traps where people are constantly looking for the chemical rush of new love. And I can see that being a massive disaster and a major problem for relationship longevity, as well as just life stability. How long does this phase last? Well, let me just go back to something else and then I'll come back to your question. You know, there are some people fall in love with the wrong person over and over again.
So that's part of the population you're talking about. Because all these chemicals and this smell that leads us to somebody, there's been so many studies about the smell of people. This is about nature breeding genetics. and not for compatibility. That we fall in love with somebody for all kinds of reasons, but nature breeds for diversity, not for compatibility. And if we have a long history of people, we keep breaking up with them. There's another part to that story.
that we need to investigate. And so that's the first thing. You've got to choose right in the beginning. And for people who have this particular trouble of choosing wrong again and again, that problem needs to be dealt with.
And we can certainly talk more about that. But then for people who choose somebody and it could work well, but they start to get bored or they want the chemical rush, what you're talking about, then that's a whole different issue. And there's lots of things you can do because. Love cycles is a spiral. We can come back to the merge. We can feel those feelings again for our partner after many moons. But the first time we go around it.
It takes a long time. And I think it takes about three years, the first time you fall in love for the chemicals to wear off. But that often is in high school, which is why many of us yearn for our... high school or college girlfriend or boyfriend because it got cut off while we were still in the high. Oh, that's interesting, right? Because our lives moved on or whatever, unless we married that person.
Our lives moved on. It was drama. One person went somewhere. We were experimenting. It didn't go well for the relationship. And then we start to think about them. I mean, that's a phenomenon, Jordan, in my work. And I coach people from all over the world. And I'm a therapist as well. I see so many couples who come in and someone has gone to their college reunion, someone who has never, ever strayed. They go to their college reunion or they go on Facebook and look up their high school boyfriend.
And the whole relationship that they're in collapses because they want that feeling back. But it's not the person they want back. It's the feeling of that first time we fall in love and how incredible it is to have our boundaries merge. and to feel like we're not alone in this world. But you asked how long. The first time, the merge lasts three years, but each time you get diminishing returns. So the second time lasts maybe two years, and the third time...
18 months. If you notice people who are really hooked on the merge, by the time they get in their 40s or 50s, they're having to change partners on a frequent basis to get the high because it doesn't last that long.
Which is the nature of addiction, isn't it? Right. I was just going to say, this is like chasing the dragon. Yeah. This is like where someone's doing more and more. I don't know what is a heroin or whatever. Yeah, that's right. Or drinking more to get a better high. I mean, you're exactly right.
There is a very strong addiction quality because the chemicals that are involved are the same chemicals that are involved in addiction. They are addiction chemicals. So, of course, it's going to mirror that. I remember a guy coming in and saying to me that he was in a lot of trouble. There was this woman, I knew it was wrong, but I had to have her. And later on that day, I had a coaching client somewhere back east, I think, who was a recovering alcoholic.
And I said, well, tell me about when you started. He said, the first time I drank, I was 14 and I had to have it. And I was blown away. It was the same conversation, one about a woman, one about alcohol. And they were telling the same story. I knew it was bad for me. but I couldn't stop. So we're in the merge. The merge is fun to talk about, isn't it? It's more fun than doubt. Yeah. Why do you call it the merge again? I'm a little hazy on that.
Because what has happened is that we are grouped up. We have merged with another person. We've left our boundaries. And in the beginning, that feels really good. And we feel like we're one person. We're not alone in this world anymore. We love the same music. We love the same things. We see life the same way. We feel good around each other. The other thing is that one of the qualities of addiction is that we have to be another substance to get high.
And when you're in that first stage of falling in love, you have to be near the other person to feel it. So you're always wanting to be with them. You can see people when they're in the merge. They just walk around looking really sort of drunk and drugged.
They're smiling all the time and annoying. Yeah. Isn't there a Seinfeld episode about this where they're in the schmoopy phase? Yes, that's what it is. But it feels good to them. My husband and I have been doing relationship workshops for 25 years.
We welcome anyone. I shouldn't say this on the air, but I'm going to. We welcome every kind of person that any mess people are in. We say, come, we can help you. But there's one kind of couple we dread. They're the ones who have been in a relationship for four months.
And they know they found the perfect person and they feel sorry for everybody in the room. And they just sit there kind of poking each other. We know that. We do that. We don't have that problem. And they're so annoying because the other people. really know what's happening they are part of their future but they feel so smug and superior yeah it's like the dunning kruger effect kind of deal you ever heard of that no the dunning kruger effect is when someone is so dumb
or ignorant, that they don't understand how ignorant they are, and therefore they think that they are smart. That's right. And because they're drugged, and they're on this incredible chemical high, that there is no way to let them know that that's happening. Just like there's no way to let them know that the person they're with has just thrown over three of your buddies.
in the past seven years. Right. Because there's a narcissism in this too. I found the right person. It won't happen to me. Right. It won't happen to me because this is correct because I feel it. Because I feel it. Right. And you know, intuition. is a very tricky thing because it actually mirrors what we want. And so it's an imposter. The wanting and the craving is an imposter to what we think is true. I know it in my gut.
No, often we don't know it in our gut. We think it's in our gut, but it's actually in our programming, especially when we fall in love with the same kind of person over and over. It's not intuition at all. It's our mother. or our father. It's the smell of the other person, which isn't necessarily a good sign. Right. When you say it mirrors, intuition mirrors what we want, what you're saying is that...
we're simply projecting onto these people all of these qualities that we want because the drugs in our brain are letting us do that. So we say, this person's perfect because they're so beautiful and they're so nice and they're so kind and they're so funny.
And I know it in my soul. And I know it in my soul. And what really what's happening is our brains get bathed in this cocktail because of physical attraction and because of other levels of attraction based on our own programming, your mom or your dad, then whatever those brain chemicals are.
They annihilate all of our defenses to red flags and things like that. And then we're looking at this person who looks flawless through beer goggles or oxytocin goggles or whatever's going on inside our head. So they look perfect because we're literally blind to all of the other reasons why they're a complete and total disaster waiting to happen. That's right. And other people can see that, but even people we trust, but we don't pay attention. And so when I say it's an imposter.
People often defend their choice saying, I really know it. I know it's right. And sometimes, you know, you're standing there by the river on a walk and you're trying to make a decision and suddenly it comes to you and you know it's true. And that's the real thing.
But it is an imposter. The fantasy is an imposter because it often feels the same. And we think, well, I knew that was true when it worked out. I know I'm supposed to be with this person. Of course, it'll work out, but it's not the same thing. So we can't trust what we feel when we make a decision about who to be with. That's an important part of it. Certainly, if we don't feel the right feelings or good feelings, then that's another kind of disaster people make.
You know, when they do it all from logic, but we really need to blend our heart and our head for life choices. It's not too romantic. So most of us didn't learn that. First I want to take a break, and then I want to hear how this gets really bad, and I want to talk about something called loops, which set in after the brain chemicals wear off. This is AOC.
We're back with Linda Carroll. Okay, so we're drunk on brain chemicals, we're in love, and we're in the schmoopy phase. What can we do about this? Because... Now that we're aware of it, can't we then, when we meet someone next, or even if we've just met someone, go, okay, we're in the schmoopy phase, I get it.
It's brain chemicals. What do we do to make sure we don't do something stupid like, let's have a baby right now because we feel so good, or let's get married in Vegas. I mean, there's a million bad decisions people make when they're, quote unquote, in love. in these early phases. Yeah, like I'm going to leave my wife as one of them. Yeah, stuff like that. Let's talk about that. What can we do? Is there self-defense for our own brain chemicals? Yes, there are lots of things we can do.
First of all, if you have a history of falling in love with the wrong person, that's another list. I'm going to talk about that. One is to make a list of all the people you love from the third grade on. I mean, the big ones, the big players. And this takes real focus. because you won't see it at first, but look at their families, look at their strengths and their weaknesses, and you will find similarities. For example, you will find that you fall in love with people who are depressed or needy.
or who have a history of having their lives fall apart again and again, and that there's something in you that wants to fix someone. that probably came from childhood and you're attracted to people who you're going to save. So find out what was similar in all of these people. Learn about limerence. That was a 1950s woman.
who wrote a book called Love and Limerence, before we knew all the chemicals, and began to describe it as what the signs were when you were what she called limerence. Learn about it. Get all of the information. You know, there's research and there's books and there's TED Talks. Find out about it. Use your brain to understand it so you can create a witness to yourself when it's happening for the 90th time.
that you fall in love with someone, the red flags are there and people keep telling you, you have to be strong enough to say, what's familiar about this? And if you have the data in your head, you can at least give yourself a chance. to not go down that road. For many of us, we need to run the other way when we feel those feelings. Not everybody.
The other is to get over yourself. I think one of the things that feels so good about falling in love is that we do have an altruistic side to us as humans. And for many people, that's not expressed. And it only gets expressed when they fall in love. And we bring them flowers and cut out articles and think of what to make them happy because we're getting over ourselves. And that is such a rich, good feeling. Find other ways to do it. Do something for your community.
Walk dogs that are at the pound. Find some way to do something altruistic without being motivated by this drug. Separate. Learn the difference between falling and choosing. They're really different. Folly doesn't take effort. They're different, but they seem probably very similar in the moment because can't we backwards rationalize like, look, I found you and I dated a lot. So now we're in love. So I chose you. And it's like, no, you guys met on Tinder.
or at Match.com or even through friends or even in a class, but then you quote unquote grew on each other and it just happened, that's falling. Yeah, it's a great point. Okay, so choosing doesn't have a lot of feeling in it. It's a data sheet. You know, it's a spreadsheet. How it's different from following is if you can't say what the red flags are, we all have red flags. We all bring trouble. It's part of our human condition.
Falling means I can't see anything. This is the person that's going to make me happy forever and ever. That's falling. And it's very self-motivated, isn't it? You're going to make me happy. Choosing is and has to be if it's really choosing.
you know, there's some things that I'm concerned about. I really have trouble with his family. You know, he's gone through seven jobs since I've known him. But on the other hand, blah, blah, blah. But we've got to be able to see the trouble as well as the great stuff.
And if you don't see the trouble, run because you're in a drug state. We all have trouble. It doesn't have to be big trouble. I know that right now I'm really loving to go birdwatching because it's new, but it's going to run out and get old. And she's obsessed with it. That could become annoying. We've got to be able to say those things and enjoy the ride, but don't make choices until you have had some disagreements, until you see who the other person is when they don't get their own way.
Until you hear their story enough to see if they're accountable for the parts of their life story that hasn't gone well. If they're always blaming other people, guess what? Once you hit the next stage, who are they going to blame? Yeah, you. And how do we get through? Well, we haven't talked about the really bad part, but how do we get through the disenchantment phase is really have to be able to be accountable for our part of the loop or our part of what's causing the trouble.
And if you go off with a person who doesn't have that skill, they're not going to suddenly get it when they need it. Is it weird that I don't want to let my girlfriend listen to this episode? I'm like, oh God. Maybe we should just talk about something else. Right, yeah, let's change the subject. But it's good news, it doesn't stop there. We can make it work in so many different ways when we talk about loops and also...
I want to talk about how the problem people come in with is never the problem. And I want to talk about what the problem is and what we can do about it. But after we move into the stage of disenchantment, where just like in the first stage, everything was right. In disenchantment, everything is wrong. Right. So now it's, I hate birdwatching and I hate the way you smell and I hate the way you fold socks. Yes, it's all of it, you know. And why did I do this? And it's like, you know, real.
Buyer's remorse is a terrible expression, but I really made a mistake and I wonder whatever happened to Julie. And it's important to know it's natural that we get disillusioned with everything, with everything that we love, with work, with the violin. You know, there's always times we think, why am I doing this? And we are not going to not do that in our relationship. You know what it is? It's like the seasons. Again, there's winters to love. Everybody has them.
You know, we're sort of cold and separate and there's springs and summers. We don't want to miss winter. It's a real season. It's a season in relationships. And so it feels sometimes like it's over. But most often it isn't over. And I'll tell you what, Jordan, I've worked with people for 35 years and I can honestly say this. I've sat in front of people who had everything going for them.
But they didn't have the energy of wanting it to work very much. And it fell apart. And I've set in messes that you would not believe. I mean, they haven't even made a miniseries that could keep up with some of the messes I've set in. I can imagine. If two people want it to work and they're willing to learn the skills, they can do it. Because sometimes that essential connection doesn't make any sense, but it is there.
In spite of all the things that have gone wrong, people put it back together. But it takes skill and work to do it. So disillusion, we have to do something. We make a decision. I'm going to stay in this forever. I'm going to split. I'm going to do the work. and find out what would happen if I could learn the skills. You notice I'm saying not we, I'm saying I, because you can't do it for someone else. What would happen if I could learn the skills of being a wholehearted lover?
And then maybe the relationship will not only become better than it was in the beginning because it's real, but it also can go back into this cycle again where we feel the merge. And we may feel disillusionment, but we know what it is and we move on. Okay, so we've got the disillusionment.
what do we do to keep these things in mind is it just awareness or is that the best defense like okay this is disillusionment it doesn't mean i hate you it just means a reality check set in okay we're in this lovey-dovey phase it doesn't mean that everything's perfect it just means we're in this particular phase. I mean, is it just the ability to being able to take a step back from this and say, this is where we are? I think it is, you know.
I'm not trying to sell my book, but my book has a colored wheel of this in it. And one of my clients took the wheel to Kinko's and blew it into this huge poster size and put it up in his bedroom. He tells me that this helps him all the time. Remember the stages. Give ourselves, and there's many wonderful other books out there, give ourselves reminders that this is just a day. It's just a season. That spring is going to come.
I always buy flowers in the winter because I need to be reminded. And so we need to be reminded about this also. I think it's wise to do this with ourselves, right? Because... The temptation is to be aware of the phase and then do exactly what we just discussed where you say, well, but I'm probably the exception to the rule, which is funny because that's exactly what the rule is, is that everyone frigging does that, right? Yeah.
But, you know, we have, I think, a mindset. And again, it's from our cultural messages, which is that we know sometimes work is hard and boring or that there's hard parts to it. But we don't expect that in love. It feels like there's something wrong when we're having a particularly hard time and when we're in one of those struggles. And it's not that there's something wrong. It happens to everybody.
The trouble is we tell ourselves a story about this means because it's not easy that I'm with the wrong person. That's absolutely not necessarily true. It just means we're using a hammer and we don't need a hammer. We need a saw.
So what other tools do we have aside from just being aware of the process? Actually, at AOC boot camps and workshops and things like that, we actually teach a lot of the skills of self-awareness and relationships, and in every situation, actually, this type of thing could help. help us move into and eventually through the merge and beyond. And I think that's important. It's not just self-awareness though. Are there any other tools that we can use to keep ourselves in check?
Yes, and I'm very visual, so I'm going to describe this visually, okay? There's two. One is called... The problem isn't the problem. And the other is called infinity loops. And if we know these two tools and understand what to do about them, we are so far ahead of the game. And talk about this in the first stage with your partner.
So you don't bring it up when things are falling apart, but you both go into it knowing we're going into winter. Let's get warm jackets and a shovel. So if you can imagine there's a problem and people, again, all the people I work with. from people who are incredibly wealthy to people that are living on bare social security, have the same issues. And one of them is this. They come in with a problem. And if you can imagine a circle in the middle of a piece of paper.
They're pointing to the problem. But what happens is they're not pointing to the problem on the same side, on the same team. They're pointing to each other and they're saying, there's a problem here. I want a dog, you don't. I want to live in the South. You want to live in the East. I want a child. You don't. I want a clean house. You drop your stuff everywhere. The problem is because of what you do, we have a problem. And if you would change.
And if you would change your mind, if you would change your behavior, if you would sometimes change your personality, then we wouldn't have a problem anymore. That's where we start. What we look out and see is the other person. And that's the problem. So instead of having two people standing together, saying we, the team, have a problem that we can solve, that we can find a strategy for.
What we have is two people who have gone outside the problem and have made the problem each other. Because in that move, so many hard moves happen. You're to this and you always do this. And I should have known before we live together this. And if you would only, you know, when you hear that, you get your feelings hurt, you get defensive, you get angry, and then you start another kind of mess because then people don't like each other.
And they see the other person as their torture, which sometimes they are. And their defenses go up and they do the same back. So the antidote to this is to learn the skills. for how to problem solve, even though it can get really bad, keep the goodwill going. I know it's an old cliche now, but that love bank account to keep it in the black all the time. And you might not feel like it.
You know, the last thing you might want to do is bring your partner a coffee or the last thing you might want to do is go to their favorite restaurant, even though you hate it. But those things build the goodwill to keep you as a team. And when you really need to be a team the most, someone once said this, an athlete said to me, that being a team when you win is easy. But when your side has just lost.
That's when you need your teammates. And that's when people tend to turn on each other. Does that make sense? It does, because it's really easy to be in love when everything is awesome. And it can be harder when things are actually not good at all. That's right.
It seems obvious, but I think a lot of people don't realize that. It's really fun in games when you're ignoring the credit card statement and you're going out and you're going traveling and everything is super fun and cool. And we all know people like this, right? They're seemingly forever in the honeymoon.
phase and they're engaged, they're married and they're traveling. And you're like, how is this person making money? And then you find out, oh, they're 80 grand in debt. That's the greatest example. That is so good. Because let's see how that plays out. Yeah. When you're the problem. The person opens the American Express bill, it's $80,000, and they call out their partner and say, what have you done? You are so indulgent. You are, you have, you do.
I'm so mad at you. And that's probably what you feel. $80,000, you know, you'd be pissed off. And so it's human nature. You've got to learn these skills and practice them. But the way it would look if the problem... was about the money, not about you, is to be able to say, you know, honey, we've got a problem because we've got a lot going for us. But what's happening here, the credit card stuff, we can't keep up with. I can't. And I really want to invite you to talk about that with me.
You don't say that immediately. You go out for a 10-mile run first and get yourself when you're not so upset. But if you have somebody pointing at you, one time I had this couple where the... woman desperately wanted a kid and she was 40 and the man never wanted kids ever agreed not to have them. They got married. They were happy.
for a long time without it. But many years later, she said, I want a child and I really have to have one. And they came in to see me and they were so angry at each other, but they had this fabulous relationship, really. And so I said, okay. I will work with you, but you have to do an experiment to do it. And this is really a great story. It's worth listening to. I said, you have to each give up what you want and you have to give it up for the purpose of getting curious about what's underneath.
It doesn't mean you have to change at the end of six months. Let's explore what's going on rather than keep fighting for what you want. So the guy realized that he had parents who always said what a drag it was to have kids and that he felt like.
He figured out after six months that it really had nothing to do with his wanting a child, that it had to do with what he learned. The kids were really a drag. They were expensive. They were trouble, blah, blah, blah. The woman realized that she had always wanted. to be an artist and she'd never done it. And so she was trying to create this child to take care of that.
I mean, they didn't do this the first day, by the way. They really worked at it. But she wanted a child because she wanted to feel like she had done something with her life. And they switched. And then he wanted the child. And she said, no way. I don't want my child anymore. I just want to do my art.
And in the end, what they did was after this took another six months, but what they ended up doing is she agreed to have a child, but she wanted to go to work and he hated work and he stayed home and raised the child and they are doing great. That's an example of joining.
about the problem and not making the problem each other. That's very interesting. And it seems like it requires a lot of really calm, rational thought that most of us can't do when we're in the merge, right? Well, you know what? If you think about what you do with your program and why it's so successful, I don't think it's because every day you get up smiling and laughing and you come to work with.
your heart open to everything that's out there. I think you use your brain a lot of times. And I think you're going to have troubles with what you do. Of course you are. And you find ways through those troubles that require you to be really calm and to have skill. rather than to react. Is that true or not, Joe?
Yeah, I mean, if anything, I am too cerebral when it comes to these types of decisions and not as quote unquote open hearted as a lot of people would probably like. It's definitely something that I've worked on. Look at your success and look at what you bring to us. people. I mean, that's also true in relationships. I think that's a great analogy. Sometimes we have to be cool hearted. Sometimes we have to use our mind. It's not the same as being cruel.
Yeah, that's true. In fact, this is kind of like what people say about things like arranged marriage, right, where you're looking at the facts. That type of love might be a little bit more longer lasting. It's just that you probably skip the merge, which is a bummer for a lot of people because we place...
especially in the West, so much emphasis on hitting the merge because it's oh so great. Well, arranged marriages, the research is really interesting on arranged marriages. You know, all relationships have trouble and they have a different kind of trouble. But one thing they don't have is the expectation. pretty low and ours are really high. And you're absolutely right. They go into it knowing that they have to work. Now, it doesn't mean that that's the only key.
Because there's something very strong about chemistry and attraction. And the person smelling right, you know, there's so much research on smell. And I believe it. People can say, I hate my partner. You know, I hate him. I never want to see her again. And I understand that they're in a space. It may well not be true. But when somebody says, I can't stand kissing her, I think, oh, sweetie, I don't know what to do for you now.
You're in trouble. You're in trouble when you don't feel that. So, you know, it's a blend, isn't it? Of heart, head and gut. But we have to separate those out. When we come back, I want to get into loops. These sound fascinating and dangerous and kind of awful and great at the same time, so I'm really curious to hear about loops that set in after the chemicals wear off. This is the art of charm.
All right, back to the show. We're back with Linda Carroll. Linda, we've been teasing it a lot. I'm curious, what are these awful things that set in when the chemicals wear off? You know what? I think they set in before the chemicals wear off, but we're just not noticing them. That might be true. So if you think about this, again, I'm so visual, think about the letter eight and turn it on its side so that you have as an infinity sign, you have a loop.
the infinity loop that goes on and on. What happens is it's kind of a variation of what we talked about as the problem isn't the problem, but it's a different twist. At the top of the loop, we have something called our vulnerability. The vulnerability is where what we call triggers, and I'll give you some examples of that, but where our triggers are. And they're not the same with every person. Something's bothering me that wouldn't bother you.
But when we get triggered into our vulnerability, something goes off again in our biology where we move into three things that we do under fire. Fight, freeze, or flee. And a loop happens when my vulnerability triggers a reaction. And that reaction is the very thing that triggers your vulnerability. So you react. So here's how it plays out.
We know from research, and this isn't of course true for everyone, but we know from research that most men have a particular vulnerability to feeling criticized. And this can be reversed. but stay with the gender stuff for the sake of time. And that, in fact, I remember reading a statistic that most men would rather die than give a speech. That's a lot of fear because they feel of the judge and the shaming that goes on with men in a different way that women have.
So Fred feels very, very vulnerable about criticism when he thinks he's being seen as incompetent or being criticized. He gets very upset. And what he does when he's upset because of his particular processes. is he goes in to flee. He doesn't run. He withdraws. He shuts down. He moves back. He goes cold. He stonewalls. His partner, Jennifer.
She has the vulnerability that, again, we know that most women have as their number one vulnerability is disconnection. So that goes at the top of her side of the figure eight. Her vulnerability is disconnection. When she feels disconnected, when she feels triggered, what she does is she goes to fight. And she doesn't punch Fred. She doesn't scream and yell and throw things. She criticizes him.
And when she criticizes him, he goes more to withdraw, which makes her feel more abandoned or disconnected. And she goes after him more. So let's say two people have just gone to dinner and they've had this wonderful, wonderful time.
In fact, this is a skit sometimes my husband and I play when we're teaching a class or giving a talk and people actually first they get scared and then they start laughing. So they've gone to a wonderful dinner and it's been intimate. It's been close. It's been fun. And they come home.
And they get home and Fred goes and picks up the paper and starts to read it. And Jennifer comes up to Fred and says, what's wrong? He says, nothing's wrong. She says, something's wrong. I can feel it. You've gone away. So I'm not going away. I'm just reading the paper. It was a great night. She says, but you're not even looking at me. He says, well, no, I'm reading the paper. We just did two hours of intimacy.
How much do you want? We just did. We just did the intimacy. We did the intimacy. Now I want to go off and do my own thing. That's funny. Jennifer goes after him. She says. You know, you always do this. In fact, your brother told me that you do this. You know, you always close down and go away. You're mad. What did I do? Is there any familiarity in this? He says, I'm not mad, but I'm getting there. And he closes down.
And then she gets more critical. That's the loop. Now there's other loops. That's the only loop there is. You know, people go to freeze and freeze is, it looks like. denying anything's wrong. Just turning on the radio and watching TV and ordering a pizza and saying it's all fine. And they might be with someone who has a vulnerability to keeping things under the rug and it makes them flip out.
So we have different loops with different couples, but that's a core loop and it all leads to disconnection. What happens is we stop, we lose our best friend, and that's where the real trouble is. We are no longer connected. which is why we're in relationship to start with. And it breaks our heart and we react from vulnerability. And one way or another, we hurt our partner and they hurt us back. And then that becomes the problem. Basically, we start to...
take one problem and turn it into another one. And then by the time we end up addressing this situation, it's not even remotely the same problem as it was. Exactly. And there's a way out of it, you know, and that's what's both sad and exciting. Because when people learn the skills, and you know, I'm just thinking about someone that I coached once whose husband was impossible. I mean, she would talk about this person. I would just think, I can't believe she's with him. But I coached her.
and how she could do things differently. And you know what? We did our work together for three months, and it was over. He changed so much. You both don't have to do it. It's better if you do, and it doesn't always work like it did for her. The only part we can work on is our own part. So the first thing we do, and so here's a to-do about loops.
is one is to devise an exit strategy that you both agree with. Not of the relationship, but of the loop, right? That's right. I'm glad you said that. Okay, just making sure, like figure out how to dump each other. Yeah, right, right. Figuring out how to get out of the loop. To be able to first talk about...
about it as a loop and understand what the loop is and when you're not in a loop. Don't talk about it when you're in a loop. So the exit strategy is the first immediate thing is to move away to get your pulse down. to get your reactivity down. Because the minute your heartbeat goes up 10 beats, you're going to say and do something that's going to make it worse. And especially we get into being right. You know, that's another addiction. I have just written a paper on that.
the addiction to being right. And we really get into that. I know I'm right. And you don't have a point of view. So get an exit strategy that you agree on. We're going to back off for 10 minutes or something, you know, and we can figure out some ideas in a minute. The second part about this is learn a counterintuitive move. And this is really an important word, counterintuitive, because if you're pulling away from me and I'm hooked on connection, I want to go after you.
So the counterintuitive move for the couple that I described, Fred and Jennifer, would be Jennifer walks into the room and she understands herself to know that it is also about her. She would never stop connection. And she also understands Fred to know.
that he's just a guy who needs more space. It's not about love. So her instinct is to say, what's wrong? Where have you gone? But the counterintuitive move would do something not dramatic, like turn into Fred, because she won't, but it would be to do something.
That feels like a stretch, like to say you're reading and I want to give you the space to do that. But can we just have a little more time when you're done with the reading? Because I miss you. But not to go towards him. Fred's counterintuitive move would be.
to look up at her when she's coming at him and to say, sweetie, we had a wonderful time at dinner. Let's reconnect after I'm done with the paper. You know, I have to have my space. I'm different than you, but you know, I really love you and I loved what we did and let's come back together. How about at nine o'clock?
You know, Jen and I do this sometimes, not all the time, I wish we did it all the time, but she'll be like, why are you so cranky? Because I'll be, you know, just in a terrible mood or something. And instead of saying, well, you're always bugging me with this and that and the other thing, I say...
You know, I'm probably just really tired. I don't really feel like talking because I feel a little introverted, and I just want to look at my... ipad and recharge and we can pick this up again in the morning if we feel like it i can count on one hand the number of times that we've had to pick it up in the morning because usually it's just we're both tired or hangry you know hungry and angry at the same time yes and what she really wants
is connection. And what you did is you gave it to her. And the other thing is that we all think it's about us when our partner pulls away. So by doing that, by what you said, by you saying, I'm tired. It took it out of anything that she had done or being wrong with her. And you also connected with her. And even though you connected about disconnecting, which seems that sort of an oxymoron, that's a really smart thing you did because she just wanted connection. You gave it to her.
And then she could breathe and go off and Facebook her girlfriends or pick up a book. But she needed a connection. And that's what you gave her. It doesn't have to be true love connection. It can be some sort of disclosure. I'm tired.
Or having some stuff go on at work, I am not ready to talk about it, but I'm not in a place where I want to be close. Or I'm really needing connection right now. And I know that's my issue. And I need it more than you do. So I'm going to give you some space. They're not breaking up. that sweet attachment, which is why do this if we didn't get some of that?
Yeah, this is something that took me a while to get, because I was just wondering, why is this so complicated? Why are we fighting about these things, or why is this happening? I did eventually just realize, oh, this is something that...
is going to be a recurring pattern. So rather than try to get defensive about it, you really have to step back from yourself and not just react instinctively. Generals say something like, you're being so negative. I don't get why you're doing that. It's awful. I just want to go visit my parents.
I don't know why you're complaining about it. And my gut instinct says, you're being attacked. You gotta defend yourself. So I used to do things like, well, you're always dragging me over there. But I'm like, wait a minute. I love going to your parents' house. What's really wrong with me? And so I have to take like a deep breath almost and go.
all right, what's my real problem? And then I think, oh, I'm annoyed with this person that I met yesterday who's now emailing me and being annoying, and I'm tired, and my body's sore because I sat too long, or whatever, and if I just say those things, she's like, oh.
I totally get it. Problem solved, usually. You have to fight that instinct to go, well, I'll show you who's right about this or whatever, you know. But that's a whole other thing. Okay, so the five strategies to do, and you're on to them.
One is don't discuss the problem when you're upset. Number two is keep the connection, which is what you gave a great example of. Number three is to look inward and to know what's going on with you so you don't get trapped into thinking about the other person. You're probably not going to.
blow up at the person who's emailing you all this stuff. You know, your professional work, use those professional skills with the person you love the most. And that is to figure out what's going on with you so you don't dump it on them.
Look inward and know this is my trigger. It's not about you. Don't discuss the problem till the storm has passed. And the last thing is another addiction. I know we're at the end of our time, but I'm going to just bring up another addiction that's similar because. There's a whole lot of chemicals going on. It's a pleasure that is so deep in all of us, Jordan. And it's the addiction to being right. And it's really hard to let go of because...
You know, our brain chemicals reinforce our behavior, right? Yeah. And they reward us. They zap us with excitement and happiness because it's the dopamine going off, the feel-good drug. And they also punish us. Dopamine goes down. We feel... flat again. So we want to do what feels good. It's going to raise the dopamine. Well, one of the things that does is our addictions to righteousness go into that same part of the brain that love goes into. There's juice in it. It feels compelling.
It's an adrenaline and dopamine together problem that gives us certainty. And it feels so good to be sanctimonious, even though we're making a big mess, that we play with that with our partner. And so understanding about the... addictive pleasure of being right, that it's not because our gut knows we're right, it's because we're getting downloaded. And when we feel more and more righteous, we get more and more of that great adrenaline. And to practice developing curiosity.
about what the other person means, about what their point of view is, even about what if what they're saying has a little truth in it about me? We have to work on that rightness drug and that rightness addictive pleasure because that enters into all of this too. We don't want to get off of our position because it feels so good even though it feels bad.
Does that make sense? It does. Thanks so much for this. Is there anything that we have not asked you that you want to leave us with? Is there any final parting words of wisdom like, make sure you do this or make sure you don't do that? Well, yes, but no one's going to like it. Okay. Tell us, drop it on us. And then they may never listen to you again because I've said this. That's okay. The final thing is that it all happens inside of each of us. It doesn't happen by changing the other person.
The only power we have is to work on ourselves. We can't make somebody else be or see or act differently. And if we could, you know, therapists would be out of business because that's where people start. And coaches would be out of business because that's always the first thing someone says, you know, my partner is. The only change comes from within. That's what I will leave you with because I think that's the core truth of relationship work. Know thyself.
Thank you so much, Linda. This has been amazing as usual. Well, thank you. It's great to talk to you. Fascinating show as usual. The loop thing, you know, these are just... game killers for all of us in relationships, and I feel myself doing this, I've seen myself doing this, and I wish I could say I handle these well all the time. I think I might be 50-50, and even that might be a little generous, but now that I'm aware that this is a thing that a lot of people
a lot of people are doing and that it's a relationship commonality that we all probably have in common, I'm certainly gonna pay more attention to it. And of course the merge, you see your friends in it, you've been in it, you might even be in it right now. Be aware of it and make sure you don't make any rash decisions.
really tough. And I think the problem is if you're already in a marriage or something like that, you may think the merge isn't going to affect you, but it might because you might have it with someone else. We didn't even get into that, but that seems like a whole other can of worms that probably best left for... show.
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website at theartofcharm.com. This episode of The Art of Charm was produced by Jason DeFillippo. Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor. Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogarty. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Go ahead, tell your friends. Thanks for listening to The Art of Charm. Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more