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Criticism, defensiveness, and emotional withdrawal can become major roadblocks, making the journey toward a fulfilling relationship seem almost unattainable. How do couples navigate these natural challenges and cultivate a deeper, more enduring connection?

In this episode, listeners will discover practical tools and mindful practices intended to transform criticism into connected communication. By exploring specific appreciation techniques, scheduled sharing practices, and innovative exercises like “caring and sharing” sessions, couples can nurture a safer emotional environment. With insights into balancing playfulness with constructive dialogue and creating conflict-free zones, this episode aims to equip partners with the skills needed to cultivate lasting intimacy and emotional security in their relationships.

Warren Farrell, PhD, has coached couples and psychologists worldwide in couples’ communication for the past 30 years. His popular course is “Role Mate to Soul Mate: The Art and Discipline of Love.”

Dr. Farrell has been chosen by the Financial Times of London as one of the world’s top 100 thought leaders. His books are published in 19 languages, and include The New York Times bestseller Why Men Are the Way They Are, international bestseller The Myth of Male Power, and 2018's The Boy Crisis. His previous book on couples’ communication, Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, was a selection of the Book of the Month Club.

In this episode

06:20 From gender awareness to relationship transformation: A journey of advocacy and education.

10:50 Overcoming defensive listening with caring practices.

17:45 The importance of creating a safe environment for couples to handle criticism by regulating their nervous systems.

22:41 Cultivating deep connections through specific appreciation and conflict management.

32:48 How partners can effectively respond to critical comments while prioritizing thoughtful communication.

39:23 Enhancing relationship dynamics through awareness and accountability.

45:58 The importance of play and teasing in strengthening couple dynamics.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Implement “Caring and Sharing” practice: Schedule a weekly session where both partners share one concern or criticism, starting and ending with two specific appreciations to foster a safe communication space.
• Regularly express specific and detailed compliments to your partner to make them feel seen and valued, reinforcing positive interactions.
• Dedicate a child-free two-hour block each week to address relationship issues in a non-confrontational setting to ensure full attention and understanding.
• Integrate meditation and adopt the six mindsets over time to create a safer environment for communication, helping regulate emotional responses.
• Incorporate playful activities, such as teasing and roughhousing, to bond and improve the relationship, ensuring the playfulness is understood and not misinterpreted as criticism.
• Train yourself to listen to your partner's criticism without becoming defensive by reminding yourself of your deeper love and commitment.
• Use journaling to write out your perspective and then your partner’s perspective on conflicts to gain deeper understanding and diffuse immediate emotional reactions.
• Apply spontaneous gestures like playing music or dancing together to change moods and enhance connection, practicing these regularly to reinforce positive dynamics.

Mentioned

Role Mate to Soul Mate: The Seven Secrets to Lifelong Love (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say: Destroying Myths, Creating Love (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Why Men Are the Way They Are: The Male-Female Dynamic (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

The Myth of Male Power (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Why Men Earn More (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication

Connect with Dr. Warren Farell

Websites: warrenfarrell.com

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

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Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About this Episode

Warren, thank you so much for joining us here today.

I'm really looking forward to it, especially after having a little bit of a chance to chat with you for a while.

Yes, me too. I'm very excited about what you have to share and your approach. As you described, being very pragmatic, as well as evidence-based and very centered, and having that be such a blend that you support people in.

Before we dive into our topic, I love just the languaging around overcoming unnaturalness in sustaining love long-term. So just even that languaging, people might their cock head around. Unnatural, hmm? So I want to get more in on that. 

But before we do, would you be willing to share a little bit about you, where you're coming from and how you began, or just how this work is meaningful to you, supporting people in relationship?

Absolutely. In a way, I've been involved with gender issues since when I was doing my doctorate at NYU, the Women's Movement surfaced, and I was teaching at Rutgers. I was really excited about it, and the students said, change your dissertation topic to something to do with the Women's Movement. That led me to be deeply involved with women's issues. Then now, got into a big debate about whether men should be involved at all in The National Organization for Women (NOW). They finally decided that they would try out an experiment, to let me conduct some men's awareness groups, or consciousness-raising groups is what we called them at the time. If they worked and could get the men out of the women's hair and allow them to say what they needed to say without feeling intimidated, then they would continue to allow men in NOW. So I started that, and that led to my forming some 350 men's groups. Everywhere I went, I also formed women's groups who passed around pieces of paper—which were things that people wrote on at that time, for people that are young and don't know what paper is.

Oh gosh, yeah.

So that led me to having men hear women and women hear men. I found that they both needed separate groups for a while to be able to feel heard by people of their own gender. Then I started seeing that the men and women both had images of the other that did not fit what the other felt was accurate. So when I got the groups together, they really were very much educated by that. That was probably the beginning. Even when I wrote a book called Why Men Are the Way They Are, and did books on men and women and gender Issues, I began to see that it was really helpful to have a couples' communication slice of my workshop on why men and women are the way they are.

But then I got, and this was in the era of letters, where somebody wrote me a letter—again, on paper and pen—and they sent it to me and said, that little part of your workshop on couples' communication was so good, I'm using it for my family business. But that family business happened to be Walmart. So I realized that if this guy could hire any consultant he wanted to, and this was working, that all the other ideas that were in my head that seemed to be percolating, I needed to put them on paper. And also, I needed to start to expand and just do a workshop that I ended up calling Role Rate to Soul Mate. I've done that for the past 30 years, and that led to this book that just came out called Role Mate to Soul Mate. So that was sort of the initial inspiration for that.

I think another inspiration for putting it into book form was, my workshops, by the time people travel there and pay the tuition etc., are expensive. I was seeing people who had filed for divorce take the workshop and tell their lawyer to withdraw their filing. I was seeing people just feel heard for the first time in their life, that it wasn't dangerous to say what they were really saying. I felt this was really not right to just keep this in workshop form. So first, I formed an online couples' communication video. But I realized it needed more depth and breadth than that. So that led to my inspiration to put this into book form.

Wonderful! Well, I mean, what experience and training and work that you've done to support people in navigating the gender piece, and then being in relationship and really cultivating deeper understanding. It's not always just about communication, as you're speaking about—really feeling heard, really feeling seen, having that support and safety to really drop into the deeper vulnerability of authenticity, which is hard to do when it doesn't feel safe.

Absolutely. In fact, um, John Gottman and everybody suggested things like active listening. And what really inspired me to write the Role Mate to Soul Mate book was that active listening did not work, except with a therapist. The studies found this. So I started saying, what is there about active listening that people aren't using it without the therapist's guidance? I realized that two things were happening. When people heard personal criticism, they basically heard, on some level, an enemy. 

But active listening was great for the criticizer. She or he would say what I'm concerned about and what I'm angry about, or what you did wrong is, and the person who was listening had to sort of repeat. They felt defensive, as was natural. But worse yet, they had to repeat what their partner was saying, and make sure they kept repeating it until they didn't distort anything or didn't miss anything. By the time they were finished, they didn't want to even enter into that arena again. So that's why it wasn't happening until they actually paid money to go to a therapist. So then we're back to having to pay money, like going to the workshops.

So I started to say, maybe I can develop a workaround to this. But I realized I was dealing with something very serious, which was, if what I'm saying is true about an enemy and dysfunctional being part of nature, that we're talking about an evolutionary shift. Could I devise a way that a woman and man, or two men, or a parent and child, which is what I call a couple. Any two people who love each other, that have had issues, that would like to continue loving each other with fewer issues. So I asked myself, is there any way that I can get men and women to really hear each other and feel safe doing it? Long story short, I devised something called a Caring and Sharing practice. The Caring and Sharing practice was like this. You're upset, and you want to bring it up. Nope, save it for this caring and sharing practice. You're allowed one concern a week, or criticism a week, to be shared to your partner.

But before you share this to your partner, a few things happen. First, I work with couples on the discipline of appreciating each other at five levels of specificity. I can come back to that later. They give two appreciations at the beginning, and two appreciations at the end. So when you go to the Caring and Sharing time, you anticipate: I'm going to be appreciated on four different levels at multiple levels of specificity, and my partner will share one concern in the middle. Well, that's a little bit safe. But it really doesn't solve the underlying problem of how do I hear my partner's criticism without still feeling all tightened? So I first have them meditate. So if the natural state is defensiveness, I had to alter the natural state. I altered the natural state by developing, over a 30-year period, six mindsets that the couples told me, in follow-up phone calls, worked the best for them. We went through maybe 50 mindsets and boiled it down to 60 that were the most effective.

So I'll give an example. The simplest mindset is the love guarantee. So the person who is about to hear the criticism of their partner, says to themselves: If I provide a safe space for you to say whatever you want, in whatever tone of voice you want, and it may be completely inaccurate from my perspective as a version of what I believe. But I just provide a safe space for you to say it anyway, even if you're sarcastic. Then I know that you'll feel safer with me, more secure with me, therefore more loved by me, and therefore we'll have more love for me. Oh, all right. So if I just provide an environment for you to share that, the worse it gets from your part, in the way of distortions or whatever, the safer you'll feel, the more amazed you'll be that you feel safe, and the more that will deepen your love for me.

Then I have the couples do my favorite thing, which is that they sit back-to-back, and they write in a piece of paper that they're told that their partner will never see. The question is, if your partner or if your loved one was about to be killed, like in an avalanche—not an avalanche, but let's say drowning or a car accident—and you knew with a 100% certainty that you could save her/his life, but you knew intuitively that you'd have about a 50% chance of dying yourself, would you do it? Yes, no, uncertain? Subtract children as a consideration. I found that more than 90% of the men, and a little bit over 80% of the women, said: Yes, they'd take a 50% risk of dying for a 100% chance of saving their partner's life.

So then the first mindset I have people do is say: Well, if I'm willing to die for you, the least I can do is listen to you. So it puts listening in perspective. By the time they're through with these six mindsets, and they read those mindsets out loud to their partner that's going to be sharing the criticism, so the partner knows that they're preparing themselves to be safe. Because when they feel safe, when the receiver feels safe, then the partner is safe. So that's a little bit of the tip of the iceberg of the process I ask them to go through in just the first of 23 Love Enhancements, which is called the Caring and Sharing Practice.

There's so many things that I am appreciating about what you're describing in your protocol. Just the first thought is, it's a biohack. It's helping people gain more safety to regulate their nervous system, to tolerate the discomfort of getting some constructive, or holding space for what will be a concern of their partners that one could very easily take defensively. You're really helping them be better equipped in negotiating that and being able to hold a bid, both from the appreciations. I know you didn't necessarily maybe want to say a little more about the specificity of those. Just these six mindset practices that really help them feel viscerally, and really get into that state of how much this person means to me and what we're really after here in our bonding, and the commitment and the devotion. Like, of course, that seems more tolerable and doable.

Yes, I love the way you said “regulate the nervous system.” Because that is a lot of what's happening. The more deeply you love somebody, the more vulnerable you feel. People often feel, you won't listen to me, you don't love me. The truth is oftentimes that if I meet somebody on a plane and they criticize me, no big thing. But if my wife criticizes me, she's the love of my life, and the fear that she might have less respect for me that the criticism reflects, that I have to really work that through. The good news is that when I do this, I know with a 100% certainty when I hear her out, that she just feels so loved and so much more secure. It literally always works.

Yes. I mean, to your point, I couldn't agree more. I think the attachment research helps us understand, in adulthood, romantic attachment. Our nervous systems see a threat to that as a survival threat.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes. So in your Sharing and Caring practice, this is recommended to have the bookends of the appreciation, the two and two on either side. Then, do they choose between, do you say two of the six, or they do all six?

They do all six of the mindsets. But before they do the mindsets, I work with them on something called one of the Seven Secrets to Lifelong Love, which is a subtitle of the Role Mate to Soul Mate book. One of those seven secrets is appreciating your partner. Most people will say, if we were at Thanksgiving dinner, let's say, and I said: Liz is such a good cook, isn't she, if she'd made the turkey? And Liz would feel appreciated by that. But if I said something like: Sweetie, you're such a wonderful cook! By the way, how did you get the skin so crisp on that turkey? Then she tells me how. So I'm expressing both appreciation more specifically, and also curiosity. I am creating her as the advice-giver, which shows respect.

Then I move on to level number two, and I say: You also managed, it seems to me, to get the dressing so moist. What amazes me is how you got both turkey's skin crisp, and the dressing moist, at the same time. Then she gets to give the answer to that. Then I maybe move to: And the spicing, I thought, was really good too. But just that's a general appreciation, spicing good. But even more specific would be saying something like, was that maybe parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, whatever, some other Simon & Garfunkel spice? So she sees that I'm not just saying spicing is good, but I'm really tuning into the exact type of spicing. That's what I mean by levels of specificity. I train each couple, when they appreciate, to do five levels of specificity at each appreciation. So then you get two appreciations before you hear the one concern, and two appreciations afterwards. The underlying nervous system reduction is that: Oh, I'm going to be entering into a practice in which I'm going to be largely appreciated at the beginning and appreciated at the end, and then I know how now to handle the concern that's express. So all this is a win.

Yes. I really appreciate that if a couple is in practice of doing this frequently, that the real recommendation here is not to just do a broad sweeping. Like, you're really kind, and then I think you're attractive, and then here's the thing I really want to say. So it's digging in a bit, and really, the person that's giving the appreciation to really contemplate what about that, how come it does matter, and the value or the character of the other person, or why it is so compelling? To be very specific gives more opportunity to connect with it more deeply, then both for the person giving and the person receiving.

Absolutely. Especially in a group, when you're appreciating somebody specifically, that person has a chance to shine in the whole group. 

I've never had somebody come up to me and say: Dr. Farrell, I really need to get a divorce from my partner, she/he really understands me.

Right. Just wanting to acknowledge your earlier point, that when couples muster the courage, or one partner musters the courage and the bravery to approach or raise a concern, and it goes poorly, or people's reactivity or their threat systems get activated and it doesn't go well, it's really hard to want to do that again. That didn't go well. So I imagine that while it might not always be comfortable, and there is a bit of tolerating some anxiety or distress even, hearing the complaint or the concern, that there's so much more to regulate, anchor, to have ground around, that can be soothing, while triggering a little maybe. But that the outcome will provide more encouragement for people to want to do it again.

Yes, and that is the key thing. I say to people in my workshop, hopefully over these three days, you've gotten some insights. I will say to you very honestly that this workshop is no better than going to a weekend yoga class or an exercise class where you really learn some very good techniques—some of them you'll remember, some of them you won't. But if you don't practice this basically weekly, then it's going to slip away, slip away, slip away. The book is somewhat good for practice. But I found that people who actually watch the online video of the course that I do find it much easier to follow that video and sort of pause every time I do an experience, and then do that experience themselves, and then watch how I process the experience with the couples that I have on the online video.

But the practice of it, repeatedly, is what really makes what is biologically unnatural to do to something that becomes natural. Your neurons start firing from the biologically natural. When I'm criticized, get defensive, and if I'm a lawyer, I've spent my life knowing how to do that well. Therefore, that's one of the reasons I think lawyers have the highest percentage of divorce of any white collar occupation, which gives you just a sense of how dangerous and how damaging being such a good defender is.

Yes. I mean, there's so many ways in which we're skilled at avoiding or not going to this place, and attorneys are very skilled in being able to maneuver verbally. I would argue, most people are not doing it to avert or deflect in a mal-intended way. It's just perhaps a real way of coping with the anxiety or the distress, as you mentioned, at the onset of just how threatening it can be when our significant other appears to be disappointed and upset with us. So it is a tendency to want to turn away from what feels really scary.

Yes, absolutely. So once the Caring and Sharing is done and the appreciations are done, that takes care of two hours a week. The question is, the week is a little longer than two hours. It's like 168 hours. So what do you do for the other 166 hours? So another one of the Secrets to Lifelong Love is teaching the people, through either the book or the workshop, how to be able to create a conflict-free zone, and then sustain the conflict-free zone. So I'll give you one example. During the week, criticisms will come up.

Now, I'll just basically do an anatomy of a criticism for a second. 

The person hearing the concern often experiences it not as a concern, not as a suggestion, rather as a criticism. Male-female, male-male, parent-child, this is sort of universal. So I'm not saying that there's going to be a criticism-free zone for the week, but rather a conflict-free zone. The way to do that is, when you hear some concern or some suggestion being made, that you experience in your mind as a criticism, even if the other person would deny that, that your job is to visualize. Once you've had the experience of the Caring and Sharing time, you visualize: I have two choices here.

Choice number one is, I can respond to my partner with my thought and counter that criticism, and chances are pretty good that the whole situation will escalate and we'll soon have an argument or a conflict. Or alternatively, I can visualize that I have either about a 100% chance of having this become an argument, or alternatively, I have about a 100% chance of being able to be heard completely if I bring this up as my issue in the Caring and Sharing time. So the point there is that either person can stop the argument at any time by visualizing that this is better done in Caring and Sharing. Therefore, it's important for everybody to have on their calendar, the next Caring and Sharing time, which I ask couples to set aside once per week for two hours when children aren't around, and you just make special arrangements to have your private time, and then reserve some time afterwards. Because usually, I get teased in my workshop that this was the best poor foreplay I ever had. It's amazing what happens when people feel really understood. So that's one way of doing that.

The other way of maintaining the conflict-free zone is something that I call journaling, or that anyone would call journaling. But the first level of the journaling, when you're beginning to sense some tension, is what I call the first stage of four stages. It's what I call the self-righteous stage, where you write down: why I'm a 100% right and why she/he is 100% wrong. The second is a little bit of a compromise to that, a couple of things. The third is, everything my partner said that I can see might be right. The fourth thing is writing the entire thing out from my partner's perspective, in my partner's shoes.

Usually, by the time people are done with that, the result is that they don't even feel a need to bring it up. They feel much more like: Oh, all right, that's what she meant, that's what he meant. But if they do need to bring it up, because lots of things are real concerns, then that becomes your number one candidate for that one concern that you bring up that week. So that's a little bit of the way of maintaining the conflict-free zone.

My favorite way is, I have everybody in the workshop choose their favorite fast-dance, high-energy music, followed by their most romantic music. So sometimes just turning that music on changes the energy, and then after you do some fast-dancing together, you usually are more in the mood to just hold each other closely for some John Legend All of Me, or some version of your romantic song. So I have everybody exchange that piece of information.

Then I have a favorite one called fake it till you make it. Everybody is astonished when I bring this up because I'm so anti-fake-it. But the truth is, let's say you're having some friction with your partner and you go out and you buy your partner flowers, even though you're upset with him/her. Then as you're buying those flowers, you're anticipating a positive response, you're anticipating a break in the ice, you're anticipating that your partner is really going to feel good about the fact that you really cared about them, especially in this area of tension. So you're faking it for a while, but you are beginning to change your internal mindset as to what's going to be happening here. You're appreciating your partner more because you know that your partner's going to be appreciating this, and it begins to melt the ice. So that type of fake it till you make it, I really am strongly in favor of.

Thank you for all of these exercises and making this so actionable for people that want to experiment with this. I have a question for the first option you gave, for one to visualize in real-time. Often, the partner that's speaking in a way that's being perceived as criticism will recognize their partner isn't just endorsing, or like: Yeah, you're right. So do you make this explicit, like: Oh, I'm doing my practice of visualizing or imagining, or this is something I imagine I might. I doubt you would say that, because then that could launch into more dialogue. Can you talk to us about what does that look like in practice? If the partner who is speaking in maybe critical terms is looking for a response from their person, and their person is doing this visualization, what might they actually say that's genuine or authentic in that?

They might just say: Hmm, okay. Nothing much more than that. Like, I acknowledge that you've said that, and they might just say something like, let me give that some thought.

I like that.

Without a response. Or they might have a stronger negative feeling and just say to their partner, I have a thought about that. But let me say that in the Caring and Sharing time where I can really listen to you more effectively.

Okay, thank you for that range of when someone's feeling a little bit more activated, particularly if the partner is seeking a response. Like, well, what do you think? Or really wanting that responsiveness to have some different ways to indicate that I would like to think about this, or I want to give this a little bit more thought. Or I'm noticing I'm having a little bit of a reaction, but I would love to just really hold space in our Caring and Sharing time so we can really hear you, like you said.

Yes, absolutely.

Wonderful. Well, so many different things. Now, would you say even that the couple could access, I know you're talking about doing this in a workshop, the music and the different songs? Do you encourage couples to practice that at home?

Oh, yes. One of the big motivations for putting this into book form and doing the online video course, is that a really clear statement I make in my workshop is: If you just take all this and think this is going to change your life, you have about a 0.5% chance of that happening. It's like going, as I said before, to an exercise or yoga class. You pick up a few things, but you don't practice it. Basically, you've done yourself a little bit of good just from the insights you get, but very little. Because this is so biologically unnatural, like we started out talking about. 

Also, because our great grandparents, I ask people in my workshop, do you believe that you communicate better than your parents and grandparents? Virtually everybody in the workshop raises their hand and said, yes. I said, what's the divorce rate greater for? Did your grandparents divorce at a higher rate, or does this generation divorce at a higher rate? They go, well, actually this generation divorces at a higher rate. I said, the difference between causality and correlation is that probably it's not because you communicate less well than your parents, you've already said you don't. So good communication does not create divorce. But what does create divorce is higher expectations that are unfulfilled. When grandpa and grandma got married, the issue that controlled them was survival. Mom had to risk her life bearing children, and spend her life raising children. Men had to risk their life in war and in hazardous jobs, and spend their life earning money that often somebody else spent while they died sooner. So neither sex had rights. Both sexes had responsibilities, and both sexes' responsibilities were predicated on the fact that this was necessary for survival. I don't play soulmate. You must be blankety-blank kidding! I play a role that I think is gonna be most helpful for this family to survive.

So if you, as a couple, believe that all the things I'm teaching in this workshop, because you've learned them, you should be practicing them, you will be creating expectations that are so high, you'll never fulfill this. Yes, you should be practicing them. But you're going to have to practice them a great deal to change the neurons in your brain from the natural biological responses of defensiveness and anger and criticizing and not appreciating, or complacency or controlling or complaining. These are all what I call the four C's, the four depleters of love: criticizing, controlling, complaining, and complacency. Those are the things that are biologically natural. You have to work very hard to change the neurons in your brain so that a different set of skillsets come naturally. In order to do that, you have to practice it.

I am so, so grateful you're underscoring and emphasizing how this is actually changing our neurochemistry and our patterning neurologically and our whole system. That it's not just going to happen with insight, that it's not going to happen with reading a book or going to a workshop. Even having an experience of an emotional one will be a change agent, will be incredibly compelling. But for it to be really integrated, it has to be a repetitive practice for it to be really absorbed and shifting.

So right now you're speaking to the individual practice. When we were focusing in the first part of this, our conversation was on the couple dyad dynamic and how to perhaps give a space that makes addressing challenges or conflict more doable, and giving people a positive experience that they can actually continue to do and be in the practice of. And with the four Cs, it sounds like this is an individual practice of being aware. Or is there a way that you encourage couples too? Because I think it's tricky to try to hold our partner accountable and be blowing the whistle, like that's complaining, or that type of thing. So what do you recommend with the four C's, if you are willing to share?

The four C's are just what I call the four depleters of love, and they're not the only depleters of love. But the first is the criticisms that we've already discussed, and responses to that. The second is complaining. Complaining is a little tricky, like the perception of criticism when somebody else just thinks that they're expressing a concern. So for example, let's say you choose a restaurant for you and your husband to go to for your anniversary. And you get to the restaurant and your husband is saying: God, that waiter was rude, wasn't he? Oh, the soup, that was cold. It's funny that they're not cleaning up the garbage outside of the restaurant, it's kind of smelling a little bit in here. And he gives a number of other criticisms. Well, technically speaking, he's complaining about the restaurant. But because you recommended it, it's often absorbed, or you substitute, as you being criticized. Or the same thing with a movie. You recommend watching Daughters, and he/she likes it, and the partner doesn't. They start criticizing the movie, and you start thinking it's a criticism of my judgment. So that's an example of what has to be worked through with complaining.

So I often ask people, do you criticize more than you think is functional and helpful? And almost everybody in the workshop will say: Yeah, probably. Then, do you complain a bit more, now that you understand this version of complaints a bit more? Yes, I do. Raise your hand if you feel you're controlling. Very small percentage of hands go up. I say, you feel criticized a fair amount by your partner, and they're complaining about recommendations that you make, do you feel controlled by those complaints and those criticisms? Oh, yeah. So then, understand that your partner may very well perceive you as being controlling. So that's really sort of like, whoa! Because I really don't want to be controlling, that's what everybody says. But when they frame it through those two specifics, they can often see that they're perceived that way, even if their partner is not verbalizing it that way because she/he is afraid of getting a response that will be perceived as ultimate criticism, and therefore getting into a big fight about that.

Then the fourth is complacency. When we first hear about our partner and we meet them wherever, for a woman, we're probably putting on makeup and doing a dozen different wardrobe options. And for a guy, we're making sure we're shaved really just the right way, and also checking out wardrobe options. How does my hair look better, and what type of attitude, how should I lower my voice? Stuff like that. And it just goes without saying, he's keeping a monitor on himself, not talking when his mouth is full, etc. So that's the first date.

Then you move in together in maybe six to eight months, and you're beginning to maybe not clean up until late in the day or at all, and stuff is in your hair, and maybe you don't shave for a week. You're not putting on the makeup, and you're wearing maybe sweats, and maybe a little bit of something passes that is a little bit odorous—something you would make sure did not happen on your first date. But then time passes, and once again, you're going out to a party. And once again, you start caring about your wardrobe, your makeup, your hair, your beard, how you hold yourself, how you behave, etc. What's the message to your partner? That the people who are really important are the other people, and you are really just everyday trash. I mean, that's a little strong.

On the other hand, complacency has some value. You're able to be comfortable with your partner so you don't have to be proving yourself all the time, and that can really relieve stress and as well. But the challenge is that oftentimes, we don't surface what is the degree to which our complacency is comfort that we're both comfortable with, and when does it sort of hurt us? That the time that the best meals are being cooked, or that we're really dressing up nicely and caring about ourselves, is the time to impress others. Why do we clean up around the house when guests are coming, but leave the house sloppy when guests aren't coming? So again, all of that has the good side of just being comfortable. But we often don't check in with each other about, do we want to change that balance a little bit?

The care, yes. So you're giving us some indicator of just reflecting and really measuring, having some evaluation around how one is participating in complaining, or really getting too relaxed and maybe not as attentive to the things to care, and prioritize the relating and the environment and presentation and hygiene. These things really cumulatively add up and matter. They send messages, they have cues of visibility of the person mattering. These things are all, what would you say is the opposite of depleting?

Enriching and enlivening the relationship, and enlivening is really important. One of the secrets that I talk about in the secrets part, is the importance of couples playing together. Research shows that couples that play together, stay together—or are more likely to stay together, of course. Just knowing how to play together. When Liz or I are cooking, sometimes she'll come up and do some little naughty stuff in the middle of cooking. We always keep music on while we're cooking, and somebody turns it a little louder and we do a little dancing. Maybe something gets a little bit colder than it should, but that's a small price to pay for that connection, and there is such a thing as reheating it. So that's really helpful to play together.

A subset of playing is probably the most misunderstood and high-conflict thing in many relationships, which is teasing. Teasing is often handled reasonably well at a certain level. But if it goes beyond a certain point, it can become perceived as really heavy-duty criticism. The big area of conflict for many couples that have children is when moms will often protect the children, and dads will often tease the children. If the child particularly is raised predominantly by the mom, and the dad teases the child, the child will often interpret the teasing as criticism and start to cry, which will then send the mother into like: There's something insensitive about you honey. You made Jimmy or Jane cry, and that's not cool. But 99% of dads do not know the value of teasing, and moms and dads need to work it out.

Teasing is one of those things like dressing and not dressing, that can be very valuable, and it also can go too far. How it can be variable is, if you want to give your child a little feedback, like maybe, let's say cherries were being distributed, and the girl took two-thirds of the cherries, the older sister. So the dad might go: Oh, I see, you're really the ultimate cherry-picker. You don't really care about your brother, do you? You got more cherries, didn't you? Boy, more cherries! Good for you, the cherry girl, and so on. So what that just did was it shared criticism, but it treated the criticism. 

The criticism came across, but because it was like, let's take all the cherries away from your brother, how can we do that? The child is laughing, and at the same time, is just getting the point.

But if a dad is the one that usually does that, sometimes I've had mom say to me, I saw that point and I then tried to criticize my son or daughter, and they started to cry. How is it that when dad does it, they don't cry, but when I do it, they do cry? The reason is because the child is not used to that criticism coming from the mom, and so it doesn't see it through dad language of this is teasing, playing. It sees it as real criticism. So those are some of the types of communication that I talk about in the Role Mate to Soul Mate book.

There are so many couples that don't understand what the dynamics are behind that, that just take: this is what tends to be dad-style parenting, this is what tends to be mom-style parenting. There are about seven major differences between dad and mom-style parenting, like roughhousing, teasing, etc. And the best parenting for children is what I call checks and balance parenting, where the mother and father through their good communication say: Okay, this is when it goes too far for me, this is the purpose of that. To do that, dads really need to understand exactly why things like roughhousing actually increase empathy. No one can put it together, it's so counterintuitive that roughhousing would increase empathy. So it's those types of things I also talk about in Role Mate to Soul Mate.

Oh my goodness, Warren! I could just tell what a wealth of knowledge you are and how much you provide guidance, and being very evidence-based and informed about what the mechanisms are, like, what they're actually getting at and participating in these exercises. And you've really put this all into a book. So tell us a little more about your Role Mate to Soul Mate.

Well, first of all, I'd probably be the first author in history to say this. But reading the book is inadequate. Really, I was so realizing that people were getting so much out of the virtual online couples' course that I did, that the best way to read Role Mate to Soul Mate is to read it, get out of it, I hope, wisdom. But also, then practice it through either coming to my real-life workshop, but forget that, and just getting the online video course. So I felt so committed to that, that I decided to just make the online video course almost free. So if you get the Role Mate to Soul Mate book, you pay almost nothing for the online video course. It's actually cheaper to get the book and the course than it is to get the course alone. Because I really hope that people put the two together. Because as we talked about, the real goal and need is to practice it. And the good news is that Amazon has just put the Role Mate to Soul Mate book on sale for 30% off.

Wow, wonderful! Well, I'll put the link to the book, and then also the video course. Is that also on your website?

Yes. Well, actually, in the book is a QR code that you can use, and then that gives you more than 50% reduction, so the total cost of the online course is $97 as opposed to $300.

Wonderful! Well, I'll make sure to have the link to your book and your website on today's show notes. Thank you so much for what you do and what you're offering and everything you've shared here today.

Thank you. It's really been so wonderful talking to you. You ask such wonderful questions, you listen so carefully, and you have such wonderful energy. It's just a real pleasure.

Thank you!

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