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When your partner or someone else calls you out or you feel attacked, it's natural to go into defense mode. Humans are simply wired that way. Defensiveness, however, can hinder your ability to relate to others and damage your relationships. 

Aperture awareness is an essential skill for open, honest, and healthy communication. While our brains are built to instantly read an aperture, not everyone is aware of this, so they fail to recognize the signs. The good news is that it's a skill that can be acquired.

In this episode, Dr. Kathryn Ford elaborates on aperture awareness and its significance in relationships. You'll learn how to read body language as a sign of awareness, as well as some highly structured exercises to help people slow down.

Kathryn Ford, M.D. is a relationship expert and creator of the couples therapy model, Aperture Awareness™ — the felt sensation of availability for connection. She's been practicing psychotherapy for over 20 years in private practice and through workshops at Stanford University. She received her M.D. from Brown University Medical School and did her psychiatry residency at The Stanford School of Medicine. In addition to her traditional training, both her yoga practice and her life-long meditation practice have informed her life and her work. 

In this Episode

8:02 What sparked Kathryn's interest in mindfulness and relationships?

15:42 Understanding aperture awareness and why it's often disregarded.

21:18 Body language as a sign of responsiveness and awareness.

30:27 Fostering trust by rewarding risk-taking.

32:49 Pumping the brakes and riding the waves.

41:52 How to sift through your partner's words for the kernel of truth.

54:50 The power of slowing down.

58:34 How to connect with Dr. Kathryn Ford.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• When you're feeling tense, take a moment to relax and consider whether or not what you want to say would be better for the relationship than not.
• Use a scale of 1 to 10 to rate your level of openness, with 1 being completely closed and 10 being wide open.
• Learn to take risks with each other.
• Protect both your own and your partner's mistakes, and handle the situation so that neither person feels embarrassed or hesitant to take a chance.
• Practice speaking one or two sentences, then wait for your partner to speak one or two sentences as well.
• Be careful not to immediately defend yourself and invalidate what your partner is saying.
• When confronted by your partner, avoid asking for examples and instead go for the grain of truth.
• Give your partner the benefit of the doubt by explaining that you are not refusing to talk about something and are simply needing some time to think it over. Then decide on a convenient time to talk.
• Even when it seems like nothing is wrong, have a sit-down conversation at least once per week. Just discuss what you can do to improve the relationship.

Mentioned

About Kathryn Ford M.D. (*Psychology Today)

Stanford Continuing Studies

Relationship Map To Happy, Lasting Love

Connect with Dr. Kathryn Ford

Website: kathrynfordmd.com

Facebook: facebook.com/KathrynFordMD

Instagram: instagram.com/KathrynFordMD

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kathryn-ford-m-d-1a675b2b

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Dr. Kathryn Ford, thank you for joining us today.

Oh, thank you, Jessica, for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. I've listened to your show, and it sounds like you do a great job of bringing in all kinds of interesting perspectives about couples.

Thank you. I am deeply honored and find it to be such a privilege to have a conversation and for listeners to hear from someone who has done so much research, has done such a wealth of development in their career to be able to give us your perspective on relationships, so I appreciate that. As we pivot towards the topic of mindfulness and relationships, are you willing to share for people who don't already know you, what sparked this for you? What helped you kind of really turn towards this in your line of work?

Yeah. I think there are a couple of things that are important about how I got to where I am. One is when I think about it, I think most of us come out of childhood with some kind of burning question or something that just sparked our curiosity, our interest more than other things. 

For me, I think that was relationships. From a very early age, I was kind of fascinated by all the relationships I saw around me, but in particular, my parents' relationship. There were two takeaways from that for me as I trundled off to college and started to study psychology. One was what I got from watching my parents is that whatever was going on was super important. There was a certain intensity about their desire to connect, and the energy they put into connecting was quite impressive. And quite impressive also was how difficult it was. I also, of course, watched many times them get frustrated and hurt and discouraged with each other. 

I came away thinking this is something really important, this couple's relationship thing, and it's really, really hard. I think I kind of wanted to figure out, well, how do you do it? Why is it so hard? From there, I took my degree in psychology. I then decided, for various reasons, to go to medical school. When I came out of medical school, I went to Stanford from a psychiatry residency, which meant that I was both doing a psychiatry residency, but also that was at Stanford, so it plopped me right in the middle of California, kind of in the very beginning of meditation and yoga. Those things weren't that easily accessible as they are now. 

I quickly decided that I loved yoga. I started investigating other kinds of mindfulness practices. And so, as I started to work with people clinically as I came out of my residency, I realized that what I was approaching each person with was kind of a combination of things I learned about psychology and about working with people clinically and the importance of each present moment and what was happening in the moment. 

One of the people I studied with was Irv Yalom, who is a kind of guru of group therapy. The way Irv conducted the group was very different than most people because instead of sitting in the group and talking to the group members about things that were happening outside of the room, Irv was all right here right now, what's going on in the room. And without even quite knowing it, I just easily absorbed that that's a way to work. 

So quickly, I kind of segue from working with individuals and working with couples. As I made that pivot, I also pivoted towards instead of talking to couples about what was going on at home, I work with them by just having them talk to each other in my presence, with me chiming in with suggestions and observations as we go along. So that's kind of how I got here. 

I would say, every year now, I think I become more and more convinced that the present moment is a thing of life. But also, I guess, the third thing I came out of chiming in with couples was what we all get from the movies and television, especially back then, the romantic scenario. And if you think about the romantic story in media, it's all about finding the right person. The story ends when you finally find them, or you finally get together with them, or you stop not getting together with them, and you ride off into the sunset. 

I think that is what we still believe often about relationships, especially couples relationships, is that once you find the right person, it's just supposed to happen. And, of course, it doesn't. And so, it's a really important thing to me that people understand that relationship is something that you build and that you develop as you develop yourself. That's happening in the moment. That's not happening yesterday or tomorrow. That's happening each moment as you interact. Each moment is your chance to build the relationship that you want. 

Ah, it's so beautifully said that the opportunity is in the present moment. And that's when we have a choice in that moment. And that it's not only growing ourselves but also what we're participating in as we foster and develop a relationship with another. And what seems so beautiful, Kathryn, about what you're describing with your parents and what you were witnessed to and the experience that was visible to you. Not everyone has that visibility of being able to have access to the dynamic. Sometimes it's happening behind closed doors. 

And then, with Irvin Yalom, like the experiential work, right? His genius around attuning to what's happening in the moment and what's alive and present. And what you've been able to bring into your work and helping that in your couples work on a system that's alive in the room and your attention to that, because that's really where it lives in us, right? In our nervous system and our whole being and what's getting activated is in that moment, and helping people be able to understand and also maybe access different parts that maybe they're not used to. 

Yes, exactly.

Are you explicit about using mindfulness, or is it so much just what you do that it doesn't necessarily need to be that clearly identified?

I'm very explicit about it. When I watch couples interact and start to go off track, there are a couple of different ways they go off track. One is they overthink things, especially in today's world where psychology think is so present and everything. They start to get in difficulty with each other, and they immediately start reaching for their ideas and their models. 

What does this have to do with my family of origin? What does this have to do with your attachment style? I think of those things as the roadmap. And so, if you think about it, you're driving down the road, the way you stay on the road and drive the car well and stay safe is you keep your eyes right on the road. You don't pull out the map at that moment and start to study it or the guidebooks or whatever. 

You might need to pull over to the side of the road and study those things. So, they're definitely worthwhile and useful. But in the moment, what you need to know is that that can actually pull you away from the most important source of guidance, which is what I talked about when I talk about Aperture and Aperture awareness. 

And as far as I'm concerned, Aperture is the North Star, and figuring out how to keep your eye on that when you're interacting with somebody who's important to you, especially in those hard conversations, is really the best guidance you can have. And so, that's clearly about mindfulness. I often use the word mindfulness, but I almost always talk about Aperture and Aperture awareness.

I'm smiling as you're talking because even in the analogy, I have the felt experience of driving on the road and what it's like to feel, like, I don't know where I'm going, and I want to turn to my device or whatever it is but I know that that's not safe. So, I need to be present. And the pull of that, like I, can feel it viscerally. So, your example is so embodied because if you look at the present moment, I think most people listening who do know how to drive and do drive can appreciate the conflict there. 

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Let's turn towards the Aperture. What would you like to say to people? I mean that this is a new term as it relates to awareness and mindfulness.

So, Aperture is the word I use for people's openness to each other. The openness to each other is something that's changing in every moment. It's a constantly varying openness as you're communicating with somebody, as you're in touch with somebody. 

In a certain way, everything, when we're talking to somebody, depends on openness. None of the things that I want when I'm with you, understanding, good communication, good problem solving, being cared about, none of those things happen if you're closed or I'm closed. Both people have to be at least somewhat open for all the things that they want in that moment to happen.

In a certain way, it's kind of obvious. The way I got there is I was starting to teach other therapists because something was working in my work with my couples, and I was trying to teach other therapists about couple's work. I asked myself. I'm paying attention to something that's really clearly giving me guidance about how to proceed. What is something? 

I thought the something was whether or not they were open to each other. And when I thought that that would draw. And it kind of isn't, though, like, of course, but I think we look right past it. And what I was seeing in my couples is they're looking right past that and so much else. And so, we need to learn that, first of all, our brains very easily read openness in other human beings. We have a very large part of our brain devoted to exactly that because it's so important to our survival that we connect with other people and that we know where they're coming from, so to speak. 

Our brains instantly read Aperture. The trick is, we don't know that. And so, we ignore it. At first, when I started thinking in terms of Aperture, I thought, “Ah, so I get it. My job as a couple therapist is to teach people how to sense Aperture.” And then it was this particular session where I'm watching this couple interact. He was talking to her, and she started to close down. As she's closing down, he's talking a little louder. And as he's talking a little louder, she's closing down more. 

As he's talking a little louder, and now a little faster, she's closing down more, and she's completely closed. So finally, I stopped him, and I turned to him, and I said, “What's happening right now?” And he said, “Well, she's completely close to me.” I said, “Right. So, if you knew that, why did you keep talking?” And he said, “I didn't know what else to do.”

And that's when the bigger light bulb went off for me. People do sense this, but they ignore it as a signal because they don't know what it means. Going back to the driving analogy. If you're driving down the road and you see a sign in some language that you don't know how to read, you just barreled right past that. You miss that idea and that signal. 

Our brains are picking up the cues about Aperture awareness that we don't pay attention to because we don't know what to do with it. So the important thing is knowing that Aperture awareness is what's going to guide you throughout the conversation and allow you to connect with each other, allow you to do that without injury, and allow you to do that without frustration. 

Once you know how to use Aperture awareness for that, it's pretty easy to stay related to it. I'm going to mention how you get there because what I've found is at least half the people that I teach Aperture awareness to, and the minute I say this has to do with knowing if you're open or closed, about half of you will say, “Oh, yeah, right. Okay, so I know that. I'm open right now.” or “I'm not so open.” or “Half and half.” But what about the people that this has been so out of their awareness that at first, they're like, well open or closed? What does this mean? 

There are a couple of other ways that I suggest to people to get this awareness. Once you get there, it's sort of like a baby finding their hands. You know it's there, and you can easily go back, but you have to find it first. One of the ways to find it is openness, of course, refers to all these other adjectives that we use to describe our physical state. So tight is closed, relaxed, soft, open. Hard is usually closed. Cold is usually close. Warm is usually open. 

Sometimes people say, “I'm relaxed.” That's pretty open. “I'm uptight.” That's close. So we have a lot of other adjectives for describing open or close. You might think of it in those terms at times, like, “Do I feel relaxed right now? Do I feel trusting right now?” 

There's one other way that sometimes works for people, which is if you think of those qualities that you'd like to be able to bring to your partner when you're interacting but are hard, like patience, generosity, and compassion. All of those are things that you can do if you're open and you can't do if you're close. Some people imagining, “Well, what is the state I would be in if I was compassionate, generous, and listening well?” That's open. 

As I said, once you kind of figure out where this sensation is, it's a felt sensation, just like your vision. When you look out and see the tree, you don't ask your brain, “Okay. How many photons are hitting my retina?” You know, you just look up when you see the tree. Aperture awareness is like that.

I wonder if even the physiological like most of us don't necessarily observe ourselves, “Oh, my arms are crossed.” or my tone of voice is elevated or a little more quirk, or even my facial expressions like, but I'd imagine those are indicators as well, would you say?

Yes, and that's another thing people can use with themselves. They can become more aware of the tension in the muscles around their face, their arms, and their stomach. Also, of course, this is what we call body language. It's often part of what we're reading to read our partners' Aperture. We read both. We can sense what our Aperture is, and we can also sense other people's Aperture. 

Well, I am so grateful that you've been able to identify this so clearly, and that this is such a big part of the work that you bring to others. I just want to back up as you prioritize this or help people recognize the importance, right, that when we look at responsiveness, we look at feeling seen and known and attuned to openness. It's critical for those things to happen to some extent. 

What you're saying is if we're not slowing down or aware or prioritizing this, that is viably our normal coping strategies, like you've said, “If I can't read the sign, I'm just going to forge ahead.” I even wonder, in some cases, that it's this almost misnomer that, like, let's say the sign says dead end. And it's like, okay, full throttle, I got it like, right, gotten it. So I'm going to, like, be able to move over it or like a way to get through. And it's almost like this idea that if I can push a little harder or be persuasive enough that that's going to magically open things up. Would you agree?

Yes, that is often what people do. When I talked about the man who is talking faster, louder, that's what we tend to do. When we get emotionally agitated, we tend to talk louder and faster, and we tend to be less good at reading Aperture. So yeah, a lot of people kind of gun it. Part of what I like about Aperture, if you think about it, is another word for what we often talk about as defenses. It's really the same thing. 

When I think about what happens to me when I think of defenses, I think of a wall, a wall that either has to be backed up from or blasted through. And neither of those things is very good in a relationship. Also, it was static. Aperture is about defenses, but it's something that's constantly in motion and dynamic in the way that our defenses really are when we're with people. 

In fact, I encourage people don't just think about whether I am open or closed; put it on a one-to-10 scale and get a little bit more nuanced, like ten is wide open, one is completely closed. Where are you right now? I think five is sort of the good-to-go point. If you're five or better, and you're both five or better, probably the conversation is going to go well, and you have a better than usual chance of connecting. But if either of you is below a five, you want to not pursue the content anymore. You want to do a quick pause and an outtake to discover what's going on so that we're not open to each other right now.

And often, if one of you is closing down, the other one is too because our Apertures are resonant with each other. The strongest signal for you to open is if I'm open, and vice versa. The strongest signal for you to close is if I'm close, our Apertures follow each other. And thus, this terrible pattern that you and I have always experienced in our relationships which is one of you starts to close down. You don't know what to do about it. So then the other one closes down a response. And pretty soon, you're kind of at the bottom of the well, and you're not communicating, and you're both very close.

It's a lot of threat like you've said that if we're feeling threatened, our body is going to respond differently and feel some tightness whether or not feeling kind of this almost up energy, and I'm thinking of the fight or flight to mitigate the threat, right? I think about even one of the things that are just understanding Apertures, I think of photography, right, the lens, the focusing or the widening, and so that I could potentially get super focused to try to meet a goal, but it's maybe I'm missing the bigger picture that my husband is tired, or he hasn't slept, or, you know, didn't eat or whatever it is. And that's the larger goal for us to be in the space of openness and connecting rather than like, oh, I need to get this heard right now. Right? And so, it's so great. There are so many ways to understand that. And so, as you're talking about a scale from one to 10, right, I think that's also really helpful because so many times it is nuanced.

Let me go back to something you just said. I want to capture that. Because yes, what pairs with Aperture awareness, and with falling Aperture, is kind of following the laws of the physics of this, which is that the most important outcome of any conversation is what happens to the relationship. And yes, people get very goal-oriented, even about having their feelings understood. 

“No, you have to understand me right now because I can't stand it if you don't.” The most important outcome of any interaction is, did it help the relationship or hurt it? Sometimes it's neutral, but you don't want the outcome to be that you end up in a worse place than before because then that sets the stage for tomorrow's conversation. So I just wanted to capture that while you were kind of on that point.

It's so important. And it's almost like, I wish we had some framed, like that frame somewhere for us to have as a reminder, some of us could or might benefit from and that when we're entering into these dialogues, where there might be some conflict or we're coming from different perspectives. That the goal is that we have a conversation that doesn't hurt us. 

If we start to go down that place, then we can recognize and preserve it. Okay, we're entering into a place where this is detrimental. Let's preserve, revisit, and this is really what we're aiming towards because that's the foundation that cultivates a safe relationship. 

Exactly. Exactly. Yes. 

And what a great thing to be attending to and that this Aperture is something we're also heavily wired for and that we can be attending to.

Yes. And Aperture is closed and open all the time. As I said, it is very dynamic. And especially in a conversation about something important with somebody who's important to you. It's not to be expected that they attend all the time. In fact, that's probably not a good enough conversation if it's a hard conversation because it means you're being too safe. You're being too careful. 

Relationships grow. Among other things, we're taking risks with each other, and we learn about ourselves and each other from taking risks. So, if you're staying in the 10 zone all the time, you're not really having the conversation you need to have. And so, you're going to be in and out of close and open, and you need to be able to follow that. We can make mistakes of the kind that I call running the stop sign, which is you barrel past a closed Aperture, which is very dangerous and likely to cause injury. 

We can also make the opposite kind of mistake of not noticing when it's a green light. That also can harm the relationship because a green light means the other person who's inviting you forward if you don't see that, if you miss that cue, and instead, you back up or ignore it. John Gottman calls this a bid for connection. I think he calls it turning away from a bid for connection. And it's one of the things that he discovered is very harmful to relationships. Of course, it is because that's the moment where among other things, you learn, can I trust this other person to want to connect with me if I'm offering connection.

No kidding, and to have the experience of feeling more deeply known and the intimacy engaged with. Right? There's an engagement of a much deeper level when we can turn towards. 

Yes. Yeah. 

Thank you for acknowledging that. That's such a great reminder that not only do we want to be cognizant when we're getting the stop sign, and really prioritize the conversations to be helpful and neutral rather than harmful. And also that when it is safe, if we're always in that safe zone, we might not be challenging ourselves or having the conversations that grow us or cultivate more intimacy or deeper knowing. 

Yes, exactly. 

And I would imagine, with that, that there is a level of confidence and even resilience that comes from taking these safe risks where we can turn towards difficult conversations or these open spaces. Can you speak to that at all?

Well, one of the skills of a couple is making taking risks rewarding and helping each other to learn how to take risks in ways that don't cause major injuries. And also, part of taking risks safely is having a good repair process. And because you are going to injure each other, the idea that you're going to figure out how not to get hurt. 

I often hear people say, “I just want a relationship where I won't get hurt.” Well, that's not a relations

hip. That's something else, but it's not a relationship. We're going to get hurt. And so, part of building trust and building intimacy is making sure that you reward risk-taking. 

The risk won't always go well. Your partner may take the risk of telling you some secret of theirs. You didn't want to know that, actually. In fact, it's cumbersome to know that. Like, “Really? Right now, you have to tell him about this terrible thing that happened in your childhood?” What you want to do is preserve the value of risk-taking. 

You want to handle the moment, even if it's difficult, in such a way that neither person feels shamed or made wrong, or like it's unsafe to take a risk, and we want to always protect our own and our partner's mistaking. And a piece of that is knowing how to clean up the mess when there's a mess because there's always a mess.

Yes. Thank you again, because I feel like this is so much more doable or accessible if we have the goal in mind of being able to have these open conversations, that if we're prioritizing the value of that, that even if it's not convenient, and we're not necessarily in the best space for it that we can affirm and acknowledge our partner's risk-taking, even if we might need to circle back to a different time. But just to even be able to reward that. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, absolutely. You want to be a part of making it safe for your partner to take risks because that one piece on each of your parts is such an important part of building intimacy and trust.

Nice. Well, you recognized as we were talking this is so valuable. It might even be helpful if you're willing to give us some examples around what this looks like in practice and what you might coach your clients to do to attend to the Aperture more, whether or not it's tracking openness, right? Where are we on a scale from one to 10, and also, what it looked like? Some of the examples of some of the things we talked about.

Yes, I'm glad you asked that because my work is extremely experiential. All of this stuff, mindfulness, and Aperture, in particular, when I describe these things, you won't really know what it is until you do it. And so you kind of have to start to play around with this and get into the place that you need to get. 

When I'm working with couples, I'm constantly suggesting experiments for them to do. The point of the experiment often has a particular behavior that is helpful behavior in relationships. But the point of the experiment, more than learning the behavior, is doing this thing in this slightly different way that I'm suggesting will shift your awareness into being able to be more mindful and more Aperture aware. 

The most important best love exercise I ever invented. And every time I do this, either with a couple or I teach at Stanford, and I teach workshops for couples. This is hands down. This is the exercise where people go, “Oh, now I get it. This opens everything up.” It's super simple. 

It has to do with slowing down. We talk, and I notice the rate at which I'm talking. We talk at such a rapid rate that we can barely even get the words out, much less hear what the other person is saying. Much less, we don't want to just hear the words. We want to be able to hear those words, kind of echoing into the silence, as somebody once said. We want to hear the second and third meanings of what the other person said. We want to hear the second and third understanding of what happened inside of us when we heard it. 

So the rate at which we conduct our conversations doesn't allow for any of that. We can barely comprehend the storyline. So slowing down, I sort of say, it's the Swiss Army Knife of all the tools in a toolbox. This is where everything else starts. The exercise I suggest for people to slow down is highly structured. It's so structured. 

First, people go, “Oh, that's weird. It is weird. It's not meant to be an actual conversation. It's meant to be an experience that will open up your understanding of how to use slowing down in a conversation. What I tell them to do is, “I want you to continue the conversation you're having.” which is usually something actual in their lives. It's important to them. “Continue this conversation. But starting now, each time you speak, each of you only gets one or two sentences.” 

Wow. 

That's it. One or two sentences are not very much. But you get one or two sentences. And furthermore, after you speak, you're going to wait for about that same amount of time, one to two sentences link time before the next person speaks. 

Slowing it down. 

If you think about a tennis rally, the ball is traveling most of the time. It's not being hit most of the time. So it's like, bonk, and it travels. Bonk, and it travels. So it's very slow. When you structure it that much with you and your partner during a conversation, it will help you to slow down enough that you do become able to notice everything that's going on between the lines. And in particular, you slow down enough to arrive in the present moment and to pay attention to your Aperture, and find your Aperture. And to watch it come and go to watch as it closes when your partner starts to speak, and you're hearing something you don't like, you can notice. “Wow, I really closed down when that person said that.” 

And then, as you're waiting out this period of the waiting period, you can notice, “Well, I really close down, but no, I think I'm starting to reopen again.” And so, you can see all that happening in real-time. That's what's important. So that's the key exercise. If I had to keep only one of the toolbox, that's the one it is. And then, of course, after people practice that a few times, they do. It's such a powerful one. I mean, I've had a couple say things like, “Gee, we've had that conversation a million times. We never had it like that. I never really understood what he was talking about when he said blah, blah, blah.” or “I never felt that he was really listening to me when I tried to explain how I feel.” 

And then, of course, after you have that experience a few times, it starts to integrate into every conversation. And what you want to do is learn that as you sense Aperture is closing, you definitely want to start to pump the brakes. You want to slow it down, which is the opposite of what you're inclined to do. As you start to get uncomfortable emotionally, you sit, and you tend to speed up. So if you have this thought in your mind, “Wait a second. The Aperture is closing. Slow it down.” That's super important. So that's the big one.

I like it. I love it. Just even to what you just said, what is pumping the brakes? What does that sound like? I know there are probably many examples.

Pumping the brakes means doing a little bit of what I just did as I was describing this. You start to slow down the rate that you're speaking. If you're tending to speak in paragraphs, you stop speaking in paragraphs. You say a sentence or two. And because we tend to be resonant with each other, if I do that, my partner is likely to imitate me without even knowing it. 

Especially if the two of you have kind of done this together and thought about it, it's very easy to kind of exercise some leadership in the conversation. “Okay, let's slow it down.” Or you might say, “Hold on. This is getting really dense and intense. Let's just slow it down a little bit. Maybe go back to the exercise for a few minutes just to see what that does.” 

Two other things about slowing it down. The other important exercise is something called riding the waves. And what that means is that you learn that very often in a hard conversation, as you hear the other person speak, they're going to say something that's uncomfortable for you. Your Aperture is going to close at least momentarily, at least a little bit. 

Conversations and people in conversation get in trouble when you speak as your Aperture is closing. If you're speaking from a closed Aperture, it's unlikely to be heard well, and it's more likely to trigger the other person to close down than to open. That's not what you want. So you learn to have this pause. It's really, what mindfulness is all about is this pause between a feeling that arises, which is the feeling that triggered the closed Aperture, the pause between the feeling and the expression of the feeling. 

And so, my first impulse might be if my partner says you were late again to go to the movies, I might say, “Are you kidding me? I wasn't the one that made us late.” But if I instead notice that I didn't like what he said, instead, I give myself a pause, and I go, “Okay, that's not likely to work.” It's going to ruin our evening. What should I say instead? Maybe instead, I'll say, “Wow, I didn't notice that I was late. I am really trying to be more on time so let me pay attention to that some more because I don't know I was still doing it.” 

You see? You feel the difference in that? I still have a granted “Oh, you're totally right. I was late.” But I have granted, “I'm going to take some time and space to take seriously what you're saying. And I'm also not going to just bat it back at you. I'm not going to get instantly defensive and disqualify what you're saying.”

If you were late last Thursday.

Right. You were late last Thursday. And furthermore, what are you giving me a problem about, right? So this is what I call riding the waves. You notice your momentary Aperture closure, and your momentary emotional response is negative. And then you wait until it passes and your Aperture starts to reopen. And then, you speak. You wait for your second response. Being mindful that the goal here is really to help each other stay open because that's the way we're really going to get heard. The last thing I want to do is speak in a way that's going to cause you to close down. So yeah, so that's tool number two is ride the waves.

You have another one. I also wonder if I can chime in really quickly. May I? 

Yes. 

Okay. The way I'm hearing what you're describing is if my partner is taking issue with something and I slow it down, and what you're describing is, is there a way that I can be open to this? Like sometimes, I'm even like, something I can acknowledge and validate in what my husband's saying that it might not be the whole thing. I'm still in the process with it, but is there almost a grain of truth type of thing?

Well, there you go. That wasn't one of the two I was going to talk about, but it is one of the important tools. The grain of truth. Hard conversations are almost always about differences in perception, opinion, and beliefs. We're full of differences. We have to learn to talk about them well because they are such a big part of our relationships. 

Grain of truth means your partner says, “I can't believe you were late again. You're always late. We have to talk about your lateness. You're always late.” My reality is for sure not going to be “I'm always late.” Right? Grain of truth means I go looking for what is there in my experience that fits with what my partner's saying. It's not identical. It's hardly ever going to be identical, but it's something that is a part of that. 

It might even be kind of different but related. So I might say, my grain of truth might be. “Well, I'm not aware of being late a lot. I am aware that I'm trying to do too much. I'm constantly overbusy. I can see how that might be leading to me being late.” 

So, notice. I haven't said you're right. I haven't granted, “Oh, you're right. I'm constantly keeping you waiting.” None of that. But I have gone to the grain of truth like, “Hmm, it's possible that I know something about that that we can pursue together.” We can pursue together my busyness, your busyness, and our differences in timing. 

And again, it changes the conversation because as soon as I go look for the grain of truth instead of what we tend to do, that hardly ever works. We get defensive. And what's the next thing we say? “Well, give me an example.” How many times have relationships crashed on the rocks and, “Well, give me an example.” because (A) they're not going to be able to think of an example, maybe? Or if they do, well, that wasn't a good enough example. It wasn't the right example. “I did not blah-blah-blah.”

What you want to learn to do is don't ask for an example. Don't go looking to the person that has confronted you and say, “There's something tricky here that I need to say to you.” Don't go asking them to prove it to you. Instead, go to greater truth like, “Well, let me see.” 

Part of it involves taking your partner really seriously as a partner. This is a person that you've chosen among all of the people to be spending a lot of time with, to be witness to your experience in ways nobody else is, to be trying to figure out reality with you in ways nobody else is. 

You better know how to take them seriously. And so, part of it is if you say something, no matter how defensive I feel, or how much I don't like what you're saying, or I flat out disagree, I still need to find a way to take it seriously and work with it. The grain of truth is a very helpful way to do that.

I'm giggling because I still do that. For example, less of like, I don't believe him. I think he gets ways that I'm trying to connect with him. Like, I want to get there with him, and that helps me anchor something. And so, I can replay and validate him, look for the grain of truth. I can also see how it feels like I'm asking him to prove it. So I definitely want to take that in and work with that a little bit.

Examples never work. Sometimes they're useful, but you need to be very careful. If it starts to feel like they're causing defensiveness on either part, or they're causing the person to feel like they have to prove it, a much better move is to go to your own experience. There's always something in what they're saying that needs addressing. Find what that something is.

Yes. I showed this example before, but sometimes I think in a very stressful time, my husband has said something about disrespect, like, I'm not respecting him. And I'm like, so aghast. Less about like that but just more stunned. I'm like, “I totally respect you. I don't know where you're getting that.” And if that's what I have done, it's like, “What is he saying? How can I look for that?” And like, “Oh, I'm tight. I'm stressed. He's not hearing the warmth. He's not hearing the regard and my relating to him. Thus, it doesn't feel respectful.” Right? 

Yes, exactly. 

I know you had another tool; I didn't want to miss that.

Yeah, I think the final piece of this thing about slowing down because the pacing is so important is that you're trying to slow down if you sense that Aperture is closing. You're trying to ride the waves and wait until your Aperture reopens to speak. And the third part is sometimes, despite doing both of those things, Apertures fall below a five. 

You need to know that, at that point, it's a full-out timeout. You exit the content of what you're trying to talk to. And instead, you're talking to each other about your Apertures. You're saying things like, “Wow, I think that I'm starting to close down here. Maybe you are too. What can we do differently here so that we can reopen?” 

You talk about what each of you needs. One of you might say, “Well, I've told you before not to mention my mother when we're talking about vacations or whatever.” So okay, so we won't talk about your mother. We'll go back to talking about vacations. Or you might say, “You just talk so fast, I can't follow you. It makes me tense. And then I just don't want to even be in the conversation.” Things like that. 

You're kind of interviewing each other. What do you need to feel more open? And sometimes, it's only one of you that needs something. But like I said, we're so resonant with each other that usually, it can be a mutual conversation of, well, what do we each need to shift here so that we can co-create a more open conversation? Once you get that, and then you check in with each other, “Okay, I'm back to a five or better. How about you?” When you get back to two fives, they are better, then you go back to the content, and you try again. And that's the other piece of slowing down. 

The fourth piece is about flooding. And that means that point where you're beyond recovery. If you stay overstimulated negatively for too long, your bloodstream will start to build up all kinds of adrenaline and cortisol, etc. And there is another great piece of Gottman's research. She found that everybody, all of us, there's a standard amount of time once we get to that flooded place. We all know it is experiential. You can't think straight anymore. You can't talk straight. We're yelling, or we're totally closed down in silence. 

Once you get to that point, you got to know that it's going to be 20 minutes, not variable, non-discretionary, before you recover enough before your bloodstream clears these toxic chemicals, toxic to Aperture, enough that you can speak against. So the fourth skill, really, in that whole thing about timing, etc., is to know the point beyond which you can't go and to call an absolute timeout. You know, “I know this is important.” 

You need to acknowledge the importance of the conversation if you're the person calling a timeout. And you need to mention something about, “We will talk about this.” So it's not just “I can't talk to you about this.” Instead, it's, “I don't think I can talk to you about this right now. I feel pretty closed down. I need a break. Let's talk about it again after dinner.” or “Let me calm down. And then, let's have a cup of tea and try again.” Something like that that says, I'm not refusing to talk to you, but I am refusing to talk to you in ways that I think might be damaging to us. 

And that's again, talking about leadership in couples. That's a really important piece of leadership and not always easy because sometimes one or both of you just really wants to barrel through the stop sign. And you mustn't.

Yes. Okay, this is so rich. You're saying if we can slow down enough to feel a pause and recognize just our own Aperture, and then if you can feel that pause enough that we might feel something else open that would be more productive, and that what we say would be very different than just reacting and not even not acknowledging our Aperture. 

And then, you're also saying that if we can together collectively in the relationship acknowledge where we are and shift the priority, it's almost like meta communication. Right? Talking about talking. It's talking about how we are relating and that the goal is that we have a productive dialogue, right? That if we notice, I'm feeling tired, or you feel tired. Would that be helpful, right? That's experientially helping. What do we need? How do we care for each other?

Yes, it's the meta. And also, of course, this is where you talk about your feelings. So often, what's going on is that you're barreling ahead in content, being super logical, trying to convince each other, etc. And both of you are having a lot of feelings. That's why you're closing down. And so, very often, that outtake ends up being about what are you feeling? You want to check in about Apertures, but then after that, you want to check in about what just happened? “Well, when you said X, I felt so sad. I could hardly stand it. I just wanted to leave the room.” Right? 

You really shouldn't be having important hard conversations without feelings, right? You need to feel them. And you also need to provide some information to each other about them, including the information, if I care about your feelings. I would say that the most important part of the conversation is the feelings part. And there's this storyline that we get over-involved with, especially in hard conversations that really matter. There's always a feeling and experience. And usually, it's important to include that. This pause for a timeout is how that can happen. 

Yes. And if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds as though that when we're feeling tight or closing in, oftentimes there's pain or fear or sadness or hurt. And that if we can name that, that becomes so much more important. Because while we might be talking about being late, or whatever the thing is, in the storyline, if I'm afraid you don't care or I'm afraid I'm not good enough, and I'm feeling myself tight, that's probably the biggest juice around.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. 

Yeah. Again, I feel like there's some focus. I keep thinking about Aperture and photography, that we're focusing on the things that really are most valuable or important. And especially when we talk about relationships, it's helping us give us some tools and framing around how to focus on the things that really matter.

Focus and how to stay open in the moment. It's a little different than what I teach. There are a bunch of great couples therapists out there right now. And everything they're teaching is really important. My emphasis is on the moment itself and how you stay open because in order to use all these other things that we know, like, how not to fall into gender biases, like how to work with the fact that there's childhood trauma in one of you. All these things that we know are important, but we can't do anything with them if we lose our ability to stay open in the moment. So my work is very largely about focusing down on those abilities, the mindfulness abilities, and how they allow us to make use of everything else we know.

It's so important. I love how you opened up with how elemental it is. 

Yeah, very elemental.

It's so basic, but it's also something that we're not typically cognizant or conscious of. And to see the awareness around if one is flooded and the priority to get back into regulation so that we can be on point or have the intention of the goal of having a productive conversation and that I'm not going to abandon you. And you're not going to be left to wonder if we're ever going to revisit this, right? That there is a priority to that. This is all so powerful. 

I just wanted to say, and it might maybe be stating something you've already said. When you give us examples, you talked about the receiver, being able to look perhaps for that grain of truth or being able to validate or just have some openness. So, if we're in the practice of acknowledging our Aperture, and I have an issue with my husband. If I take a pause and slow things down, I believe what I'm going to say to him will be very different than I would have just said if I just like shot off and reacted at him. 

I'm just wondering if you want to share with us any examples around what it looks like, sounds like, for someone who's in the practice of slowing down before they even initiate, and what that initiated, like, a comment would be or statement would be.

We have made a mistake, I think, in thinking that being open about how you feel means at the moment you're feeling everything, you say it right away in real-time, let your partner know what you're feeling, right? Now, that's not a good practice. That creates unease and unrest in the kingdom. You don't want to create a milieu where you feel like, at any moment, you might hear something negative from your partner because, for goodness sake, I'm going to screw up 12 times a day. I don't really want a barrage of 12 things. And then, you didn't close the refrigerator door. 

Most of the time, when we have a negative reaction to our partner, we need to already slow down mentally enough to realize, “I don't need to say that right now. If it's important, I will say it later. And also, it could just be because I'm cranky because I'm tired. And that's why I didn't like the refrigerator door being open. It's not even that important. So the slowing down at that moment and the pause gives us a chance to defer saying it right away. 

We get to decide, is this important or it's not important? And if it is important, then instead of saying it on the fly, you have what I call a sit-down conversation. In other words, you make a space for that conversation, and you introduce it with a little bit of a preamble. Gottman calls that soft startup, I believe. 

Yes!

It turns out that if we're going to have a negative reaction, our negative reaction is going to be multiplied by any element of surprise. So the last thing you want to do is catch your partner unaware of something negative. So instead, you might want to say, “You know, later on, today, if we have time, I'd kind of like to talk about that thing again about being on time. Are you okay with that?” 

So, the person now knows I don't have to deal with that right now, but the other person is willing to talk about it. And then, you have the conversation at the point that both people agree now's a good time. Do you see how that builds in? Because if you want to start any conversation, at least you want to start with an open Aperture. So, you're absolutely right. You need to reflect like, “Wow, I'm pretty absurd. Probably, I'm not that open.” 

And furthermore, this is one of those on-the-fly comments. They're going to feel sideswiped. So instead, it's not that you don't take your reaction seriously. You do take it very seriously, and you notice it, and you have a conversation with yourself like, “Wow, that really upset me. Maybe I do need to have a sit-down conversation about that. I got really exercised about that.”

 And then you make an arrangement to have a conversation. As soon as you just make it, I counseled people that they should have a sit-down conversation once a week about the relationship. You don't want to have to only have a sit-down conversation when something is wrong. You want to have a pattern of this is our hour to take care of the relationship to talk about things that have to do with making the relationship better. And sometimes there won't be a problem. But often, there will be some kind of thing that we need to work out best, and we're going to do it. And so, nobody is caught blindsided.

Oh, my goodness, this is setting it up and being proactive and intentional. I love it. I'm just aware of the time. I am so sorry I've lost. I've just gotten so interested in what you have to share. Let's turn toward what you would like to invite people to connect with. 

Sure. The best place to find out about everything I do is my website. Pretty much everything I do is there. There'll be a link to our interview at some point when you post it. So, all of the interviews I've done as well as articles I've written. I write regularly for Psychology Today in their blog series. So, you can go to Psychology Today and look at my blog posts. But you can also find a link to that on my website. 

Also, much of my teaching is through Stanford Continuing Studies. A couple of times a year, I teach a course through Stanford Continuing Studies, and that will be posted on my website, also. What else? I have a newsletter, so if they want to regularly hear from me and other thoughts I have. I also mention other people's work in the newsletter. They can sign up for my newsletter by going to my website. 

Oh, well, of course, they can go to Facebook. If you want something short and sweet, just a little reminder about something, I post two or three times on Facebook two to three times a week. And so they can go to Facebook and see little shorter things that just kind of help keep us on track. And, of course, you're welcome to make comments and like me and whatever else you do on Facebook.

Oh, wonderful. I'm definitely going to be signing up for your newsletter. I'm curious about what the workshops you teach with Stanford are. Are people able to attend virtually? 

Yes, they're all virtual, which I really liked because it means that people come from all over. I have people from other countries. It's very fun. There are two courses I teach. One is basically a couple's workshop for couples. It's very experiential. I give a little bit of didactic, a little bit of theory, and lots of chances to practice with things like falling down. 

And then, there's a second course I teach. It's not only for couples. It's a little bit more skewed toward the didactic, a little more like a lecture course. It enables people that may not be currently in a couple, but with exposure to these ideas and practices, it gives them a place to go for that. I think I'll probably be teaching again in the spring, and I'll probably teach the courses for everybody in the spring.

Ah, wonderful. Well, thank you so much for what you're doing in the world. I'll make sure to put these links on today's show notes. I am very honored to share this time with you and for people to have access to what you're teaching us here today.

Likewise, Jessica. You're doing a great thing in the world by making these kinds of ideas available to people. So, it's great to be with you.

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