Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: RSS

About this Episode

Ever feel like your romantic relationship is a swirling mystery of emotions, expectations, and challenges? At the heart of every partnership lies the quest for acceptance—a profound sense of being valued and understood, just as you are. Yet, the path to achieving this in our closest relationships can often feel fraught with misunderstandings and unmet needs. How can we navigate these turbulent waters to foster deeper connection and a lasting bond?

In this episode, our experts delve into the transformative power of acceptance and its pivotal role in strengthening intimate relationships. With insights drawn from decades of experience in counseling and relationship coaching, this conversation explores how to break free from entrenched patterns and embrace acceptance as a cornerstone for emotional intimacy. Listeners will come away with practical strategies to rekindle their relationship's safety and vulnerability, ultimately leading to a more profound and enduring love.

Jon is the founder of Growing Love Network, a nonprofit dedicated to revolutionizing relationships for lifelong love. He has conducted more than 170 marriage intensives for struggling couples, and couples in crisis. He has worked directly with thousands of couples and individuals through counseling and therapy and trained hundreds to facilitate effective marriage courses. He has been married to his wife, Joanna, since 1985. They have 3 grown children and 6 grandchildren.

Episode Highlights

05:25 Acceptance and power: Roots of relationship dynamics

07:26 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

12:54 Building a foundation of acceptance in relationships.

14:14 The shallow end vs deep end dynamics in relationships.

17:45 Establishing safety in partnerships: Shallow-end conversations

21:47 Creating structured conversations for safety and acceptance.

24:38 The role of quality time and affirmations in building acceptance.

28:09 Effective listening: a key to acceptance.

32:27 Prioritizing goodwill and understanding in relationships.

34:48 The power of positive focus: Shifting perspectives in relationships.

40:10 Navigating conflicting perspectives: The cul-de-sac analogy.

44:08 Inching back to vulnerability: Steps from shallow to deep end.

47:45 The importance of day-to-day intimacy and acceptance.

49:06 Insight into couple intensives: Accelerated progress in relationship therapy.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Schedule regular check-ins: Designate a specific time and place each day for you and your partner to share shallow-end conversations without discussing heavy topics.
• Practice active listening: During conversations, focus on using feeling words to acknowledge your partner's emotions, ensuring they feel heard and understood.
• Encourage equal sharing: Use a timer to ensure each partner has equal time to speak during conversations, promoting balanced communication.
• Establish ground rules: Agree on rules for your designated conversation time, such as no interruptions, corrections, or teaching moments, to foster a safe space for dialogue.
• Explore shared interests: Engage in lighthearted activities or discussions, such as playing games or discussing non-conflictual topics, to build goodwill and connection.
• Embrace acceptance: Remind yourself and your partner daily that you love each other wholly, distinguishing accepting the person from accepting their behavior.
• Reflect on positivity: Keep a daily journal to note things you appreciate about your partner, shifting focus towards their positive traits and contributions.
• Approach disagreements as opportunities: When conflicts arise, use them as teaching moments to explore each other's perspectives and strengthen the relationship through mutual understanding.

Mentioned

The Acceptance: What Brings And Keeps Lifelong Love (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Evolve in Love (program)

Connect with Jon Anderson

Websites: GrowingLoveNetwork.org

Facebook: facebook.com/jonrandersonmarriagespecialist

Instagram: instagram.com/jonrobertanderson

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]

If you have a topic you would like it to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon, if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Jon, thank you so much for joining us.

I'm really thankful for getting to be on here. Thanks a lot for having me on.

Yes. Well, one of the topics that you really focus on in your most recent book, and also just helping people get a sense of, is the concept of acceptance. So we're going to really be focusing on that today. As you highlight this, helping people understand the importance of this, can you share a little bit more about how this came to be, how you recognized and really formulated this?

I think it started with one of my professors when I was getting my graduate degree in marriage and family therapy 30 years ago. He said, in doing therapy, there's two core issues always at play, and that's acceptance and power. That really struck me, and I'm like, I want to know more, what do you mean? Of course he did. So I think that planted the seed probably 30 years ago. Because I was like, really, power and acceptance? You've probably noticed those two are core issues in the dynamics of relationships. I don't know if you would call them the core issues. At first, I didn't buy it. But as I started seeing my own clients and doing intensives, I just saw it more and more. I started looking through relationships primarily through that lens. Probably 10 years later, it was like: Oh yeah, everything makes much more sense to me when I look through that lens. It doesn't explain everything, but it explains a lot.

Oh, it explains a whole heck of a lot. I do believe, in the field of psychology, people might be referring to similar concepts and they might use different language. One of the things that I was really feeling in reading your book was this sense of belonging, especially with all the attachment research. That in relationship, we are wired up to feel a sense of connection and bonding, and that that is not necessarily just a preference. It's actually, as a human, we need it, from Bowlby's research around cradle to grave. So one of the things I really appreciated in your book was looking at the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Do you want to share a little bit about your amended, updated version of proposing a change there?

Yeah, most of your listeners have probably forgotten unless you've talked about it. But if you graduated from high school in the US, then you were taught in Psychology 101 or whatever, Maslow's hierarchy. Abraham Maslow, back in the 40s, a pioneer in psychology, he came up with this pyramid of what drives us. If the stuff at the bottom is not met—your food, shelter, water, and air—then nothing else drives you, you're only motivated to find food, shelter, and air. Once you have enough of those, then you go to the next level, which is safety. Then once you're feeling relatively safe, then you're motivated by the next level, which he usually calls belonging in most. There's a lot of versions. But to me, just in studying Maslow, it just became more apparent.

Belonging is a good word, it's part of it. But I think a better word is acceptance. But I was just thinking about this earlier today. I think if I do another book, it needs to be about belonging too. 

But I think acceptance is a better word than belonging. Because if you pay your dues and you have a membership card to something, you belong to it. But if you go to the meetings once a week or whatever, and nobody wants to sit with you, then you're not really accepted.

Yes, I love that distinction.

I think that third one, acceptance or belonging, really goes at the bottom. 

Yeah. I'm alone in the world. I'm not feeling a sense of love or being seen or feeling valued and accepted and known. It can be very damaging to not have that sense of acceptance. In the world, period. And we're talking about more primary relationship, in a partnership, intimate adult relationship.

To your point about just seeing the relevance of this, recently, I think it was the last interview, Don Cole, he's the clinical director at the Gottman Institute, and he was talking about couples' conflict styles. It just was so helpful. Because so much in partnership, myself included often, that if I am seeing something from a very different perspective than my husband, my inclination is to want to persuade or to try to be in a place of feeling validated myself. If the way he's describing it, I take offense to it. So we get really caught up on the sense of rightness or justice or the sense of just being, again, accepted. But when we're positioning so strongly, it sends a very clear message that we're not accepting the other.

Yeah, it's at the core of just the simplest communication.

Absolutely. One of the things I really appreciated, you have a metaphor about the pool, I thought it was so poignant. Just even some of your storytelling about fostering relationship and how this typically looks and really being explicit about what's happening underneath the surface. Would you be willing to share a little bit about this metaphor as we seek to feel a sense of acceptance, but also how that's getting developed?

Oh sure, yeah. I call it the relationship pool. If you're a single person and you're hoping to find the one, and if you think of a relationship with every other person in the world as this swimming pool, and that pool represents a potential relationship. It's one of those pools that just starts off at zero and gets deeper and deeper, until you eventually get over your head. So where you want to be in a relationship is down at that deep end, where you can express the stuff that really matters, that you don't show the whole world, and that at the same time, you're going to be accepted, and then the other person can express their deep stuff and you'll accept them. That's where things feel really wonderful. That's where you have this tremendous deep intimacy with somebody.

In the analogy of the pool, down here is the deep end, and this is the shallow end. The deep end has all the fun stuff, the slide, the diving board and all that stuff. So it's where we have the most fun typically. But it's also more dangerous, because it's got the diving board and the slide, and it's over your head so you can get held under and you can't touch the bottom. Most couples, even when you're first starting out, if you're really attracted to the other person, the strong pull is, let's just jump into the deep end and put it all out there and see if there's any deal breakers. If there are, then we don't have to waste more time and energy and money dating each other. 

Of course, there's certain specific ones, but even those, for most people, it's understood. Okay, if you cheat on me, then we're done. So you don't have to say those things. The deal breakers, like I said, they're going to get broken. So what's down there in the deep end, yes, it matters, but not near as much as what happens in the shallow end. So the shallow end, that's why when two people are dating, typically—unless they're speed dating or internet dating, where they're putting it all into an algorithm and answering a survey and all that stuff—what you're doing, even if you get past all that, then you've still got to go out in the first state and talk with each other.

So you typically have this shallow end kind of conversation—what kind of food do you like, what kind of music do you like, that kind of stuff. And what's going on there is you're testing each other, whether you realize it or not. You're testing the other person, and they're testing you, to see how well you do answering in the shallow end. Because if you reject me on a shallow end question, why in the world would I get with you in the deep end? If you make fun of the kind of music I like, why would I tell you about the stuff that really matters to me—politics, family, children, religion, whatever. I'm not going to show you that. Because if I show you that and you make fun of it, then that really hurts. So this plays out throughout the relationship.

Because I work with a lot of couples that are in crisis, so we do intensives. They usually come with one or two issues that they think are the big things, and that that's the thing that they've got to work through because it's the thing that's messing up the relationship. And what I'm trying to do is bring them back to the shallow end. They think, no, we've got to get this big issue fixed. But the big issue is often, if not the result, a symptom of shallow end stuff. It may be a big deal, for example, alcohol. So a lot of couples come and are like, well, my husband or wife drinks too much. Well, were they always this way? No, the alcohol might be a way to try to numb the feeling of not feeling accepted with the other person. So even though that's something that's got to be dealt with, well, you can't get your spouse to quit drinking in the first place. The best you can do is make them want to drink less because they don't have to numb their pain, if that makes sense.

So what we're doing is trying to get them to understand, if you can't master the shallow end, there's no reason to go in the deep end. You're just going to be in there, in over your head, and you're just trying to claw at each other to hold your own head above water. So every time you try to solve those issues, you end up in a fight and you don't get anywhere.

Yeah. Because I think that there's different forces in operation where we're feeling threatened or triggered. So we're wanting to protect ourselves feeling in over our heads, and yet we're desperately grasping to feel this sense of acceptance. Yet, there's so much running interference because we're not feeling that safety. So the real recommendation is, let's come back to the shallow end. Like, we can go back and forth. That doesn't have to mean anything bad, but just let's reorient and reestablish our sense of feeling this safety in between our connection. Is that right?

Yeah, 100%.

Yes, I really appreciated just the description of that. This is very, very common that couples are wanting to resolve or address big topics, and yet it's so fraught that there's not even enough safety to even begin the conversation. This is where people will typically earmark communication, like communication is our issue. Oftentimes, there isn't a lot of safety to actually communicate. When we're so guarded or we're using all our protective strategies, we're trying to talk, but from this very armored up place.

Yeah. By the way, most of the work I do with couples, I do with them individually. I don't know about you. Because when they're both sitting there together, like you said, they're armored up, and one can just say one little thing and the other one goes off, and then we're off into those weeds. But most of what I have them doing working on is practicing these shallow end conversations regularly. Make specific rules. You can't bring up finances or child-rearing or what you don't like about the other person. Just the topic of the day is, what was it like to be you today? Just coaching them on how to talk about just shallow end stuff and having some rules. So that's one of the big things I have them do is just practicing that. Because again, if you can't do the shallow end, you're not going to be able to do the deep end.

Yeah. Do you have an example of what this shallow end conversation would look like? You gave us a version in the dating early stages. What might this look like when a couple is trying to regain some safety when they perhaps have been flailing or not doing well in the deep end? Because it sounds like you're really saying, let's focus on offering the warmth, the goodwill, the sense of connection, and creating more of that exchange and those signals to create safety. But tell us a little bit more here, what does that look like in longer-term relationship, if you will?

The first question you asked was, what led me to this? Something just popped up in my head. Our kids are all grown now. We've got six grandkids, and our youngest has twins on the way. So we're more grandparents now than parents. But our kids growing up, week nights, for the most part, we had dinner around the table. My wife Joanna came up with this probably about the time our oldest was in middle school and was dealing with more complicated stuff. So she just had the idea, at dinner, we're going to make it a safe place where the kids know they're not going to be lectured, we're not going to try to teach them something, we're not going to be trying to correct them.

It's just a place for everybody—our son who's way out extroverted, then our youngest who is more introverted, and the oldest one in between. So we have to have some rules where the extrovert doesn't hog up all the time. So we did different things, and we played that thing, I don't know if you've heard of table topics, where you draw a card for the evening and everybody answers a question, like what would you do with a million dollars or something like that. We had a timer to where everybody had the same amount of time, and when the timer goes off, it's the next person. And we had rules that you don't correct anybody, you don't interrupt anybody, so everybody has equal time. We saw the power in that with our kids, that as our kids got older, they really craved being home at dinner time.

So that really struck me more and more that how important it is for us every day with our spouses to have some time, and this is one of the things I do with my clients. I say, you need a designated place in your living space, and at a designated time every day, you can go to that space and you could sit down. If the other person joins you or you join the other person, you're not going to be bringing up, you're not going to be trying to teach, you're not going to be correcting, and you're going to have equal time. So the two of you can decide how much time that's going to be, but you might start off with 10 minutes, so you get five minutes each. One person says, this is what my day was like, and the only input the other person has is feeling words. Oh, so you were excited, or you were bored, or whatever. Then the timer goes off and it's the other person's time.

I found with a lot of my couples, trying to get them to do this just for 10 minutes, three times a week, is really hard at first. But once they're doing it well, then they start to want to add more time and make it four or five days a week, and then it starts to just become naturally part of what charges their batteries at the end of the day. Because they know they can come back together at the end of the workday and get their batteries charged by each other, because they just feel listened to and accepted.

Absolutely. To have a framework where there's boundaries and agreements, I think does provide more safety in the conversation so people know what to expect. As I referenced conflict styles, for the one that might be a little bit more preventing escalation or might look avoidant at times, but is really trying to protect the relationship, it can be really helpful to have some agreement around what's going to happen. Because otherwise, they're probably prone to just avoid topics in general. I think you talked about this, you were saying on a cumulative level, this could just look like someone not engaging.

Yeah, sure. Especially if you have one person that every time they sit and try to talk about something, one person hogs the time, or just tries to be understood and not try to understand, or you don't have to have some rules around it. Then the other person is going to avoid conversation with them.

Absolutely. So what you're speaking about, would you call that the shallow end? Because it does sound like, as people feel a little bit more comfortable knowing and trusting that they're not going to be corrected or tried to be changed, or it's going to start a conflict, is this where they start to deepen in the vulnerability, trusting that we're safe and I can inch towards the deep end? Tell me.

Yeah, I would call it the shallow end. If you think about it, when you start off dating somebody, this is typically the conversations you're having. And when the dating of that person stops, of course it could be something else, but it's usually because something about that process isn't going well. They're not mutually feeling heard and accepted. You hear people talk about dating for life. Yeah, date nights are important. But when Joanna and I first started dating, we were poor college students, we couldn't afford to do that. But we dated almost every day, whether we're on the phone or on a walk, or just sitting on her parents' couch or whatever. 

So if it's a couple that's been married 30 years, this is probably a big piece, if they're doing well, of why they're doing so well. Because they just go on a walk every day or something. It's not every time they sit and talk, that we've got to accomplish this budget, or what are we going to do with this child, or we've got to do something about your spending money or bad habits or something.

Sure, and I am empathetic to the demands of life and how difficult it is to carve out this time. It sounds like you're really describing this very quality time, undivided attention, being really focused. So how would you define acceptance? You kind of gave us a little bit, I know probably you've already done it. But is there anything else you want to say around what this is? Because sometimes people fear that if I listen, I'm agreeing with them, and it's difficult for me to even tolerate letting them talk, because somehow I'm endorsing it or condoning it.

Yeah. You and I both know, that's hogwash. Although, probably when it comes down to dealing with our own mates, we're like, I switched to that way of thinking. First of all, I want to say, when I say acceptance, acceptance of a person and acceptance of behavior are two different things, of course. So one of the things I ask when I'm doing one of my intensives, early in the first day, raise your hand if you know of things that you could be doing differently that would make you a better spouse. Everybody raises their hand. We all know stuff we could do. So your spouse is going to do stuff, or your mate, for the rest of your relationship or your lives together, that hurts you, and you're going to do the same. Your spouse and you are both going to do stuff that is destructive to relationships. So if you're trying to think of a time or you're hoping for a time when your spouse will never hurt you and they won't do stuff that's destructive to relationship, you're waiting for a time that never comes. You're just going to be trying to change them, which is going to speed the time up that they want to get rid of you.

So acceptance of behavior, though we shouldn't ever accept bad behavior from another person, but most of the behavior that other people do, I can't control it. I can't control my spouse at all. So accepting a person in spite of their behavior, that's really what I'm talking about, which means: Hey, no matter what you do, no matter what you say, don't worry, we're going to get through it, and tomorrow you're still going to be my number one. As my wife and I like to say to each other when we've had a falling out, you're still my favorite person.

Oh, and that is not communicated enough, I do not think. That gets lost. While it might be stating the obvious for one person, perhaps the other partner does not know that, and that is what feels like it's at stake. So I'm so appreciative of you making that distinction. Because it occurs to me, even as I was saying, it's difficult to listen to a partner describe something that feels so grossly different, it might actually relate to acceptance. So if I am listening to my husband and he's describing the situation in vastly different terms, and I'm like, I have a hard time even listening. Likely, it feels invalidating, or I'm worried that he is negating my perspective, which is just a fear. To your point, if we can tolerate some of that discomfort to be in this exchange where we can feel understood, because it's quite counterintuitive. That if we can tolerate some of this, that's actually going to cultivate connection, rather than us getting to agreement about our realities.

Right. That's why I said earlier, when you're looking through the lens, when I can pull myself back, when I'm feeling the tension rise, especially with my spouse, in a conversation, if I can catch myself before I go too far and go, what's really going on here, what is she really wanting from me? She's wanting me to accept her. Then it helps me get past some of the things that might be triggers for me. She's not really trying to hurt me. She's not trying to say there's something wrong with me. She's wanting to be accepted. It helps you.

I just thought of another thing that we learned. We took a child-rearing class. This has been 30 years ago. The person teaching it said that what they tell their children every day is, I love everything about you, and they tell each other, I love everything about you. We're like, huh? At the time, our son who gave us the biggest run for our money, he's doing wonderful now as an adult, but from about age 2 to 19. So we both looked at each other, like, how can we say that to our son with a straight face? Then he went on to explain, no, who you really are. Not about all your behavior, but who you really are is 100% lovable. So we were like: Okay, yeah, we do that. Of course, the first time we tried it with him, he was like, no, you don't. Then we said, no, who you really are is. So when you can think about your spouse in terms like that, who you really are is 100% lovable. So that means you're 100% acceptable. So that's another thing I try to get my clients to, every day, find some way to remind themselves and the other, whether it's on a note. I love everything about you, or I love this about you. Because actually, it does more for you than it does for them.

Say more.

Give us an example. I know what you mean, but for people who are listening who might be like, yeah. Is there more you can say to help elaborate or illustrate that?

I had this client, his wife had died a couple years before. They were both in their mid-sixties when she died, but it was a couple years later, and he came asking for help with depression. I said, well, that's not really my specialty. He said, well, you're the only therapist I know. So I said, well, we'll give it a shot. I said, so why do you think you're depressed? He said, well, it's been two years since my wife died, and I don't want to get up in the morning, I can't get to fall asleep at night. I have to pull over a couple times a day or week when I'm driving down the road, because I'm sobbing so hard I can't see, because I just miss her so bad. So he brought with him two journals, two full spiral notebooks, to tell me about him, that he'd been writing in.

So what he had done is, when he found out that his wife had this stage four melanoma, and the doctor said she doesn't have more than a year to live, he was secretly glad that she was going to die, because he couldn't stand her. He was looking forward to living out the rest of his life without her. Well, a couple days later, he is feeling so guilty about this that he confided in somebody, and that friend of his, because the friend also cared about his wife too and his marriage. He said, you need to go get a spiral notebook, and every day you put the day and you write the date, and you write at least one thing that you like about her that you can be thankful for.

So the very first entry, and he showed me that the first spiral was completely full, every single line. The first day entry, it said, good cook. That's all he could come up with, those two words. But then I thumbed through, and as we get further into the spiral, sometimes it would be two or three lines. Then into the second spiral, sometimes it would be one or two or three pages, and they started looking like they were written by a love-struck poet. Then it just stopped. I said, why'd you stop writing? He said, that's the last day of her life. So I said, wow, this cancer really changed her. He said, no, you don't get it. All these things that I really liked about her when we were dating and I fell in love with, some of those things got on my nerves and I started trying to change them, and I couldn't change them. So I started getting bitter and I just focused on that, to where I didn't like her anymore. He said, what you don't get is, I was not recognizing, for years and years, all the things that are lovable and accepted about. I just focused on these negative things, and refocusing on what I fell in love with in the first place is what changed the way I feel.

Thank you so much for describing that. It's incredibly powerful and very moving and touching just to hear the journey there, and just the ending of her life and just the grief. Also, you're helping, and this is something I think we can all relate to, when we have these perpetual problems that don't change. You have the extrovert, the introvert. The one that's more expressive and talkative, and the one that's a little bit more contained emotionally. The spender, the saver. All these things can be quite charming or attractive in those early stages. Then as we live in life and we're confronted with these differences, it can feel so conflictual. Just the human propensity to have that negative bias, that we can, to your point, try to change. If I could make you be more like me, then we won't have conflict, or various ways of managing that. But we tend to see it from a negative perspective, and you're helping us really get that if we can continue to nurture and reiterate and emphasize: you're my person, you're my number one, and everything about you and your essence, I love.

Especially when you don't think it and feel it.

Especially when you don't think it and feel it and stay, and I guess I'm adding, tolerating the discomfort of being different, to stay curious, to get the perspective and the understanding. Like: Oh, I get it! There's been so many times, Jon, where I'm like, I don't understand what he's talking about, I totally don't love his language, I totally adamantly disagree with how he's articulating. Somehow, I held long enough to just be curious and pause and stay wondering, and somehow somewhere along the line, I'm like: Oh, I get it. I just felt my heart and my empathy.

It might not be till the next day.

Yeah, sometimes. Or even the next year if it's a big thing that we're struggling with, or in that moment. It's a huge shift, and what I can offer in that acceptance and understanding. Because so often, couples really, it's like they wanna record each other and document and try to recreate reality. Like, you said this, no, you said this, really getting stuck. But really, that's not the point. We're likely going to remember incorrectly. Even if we remembered correctly, we're likely seeing it differently. So how do we really understand and really have this attunement to one another? This sense of: It matters, and I get you. Even if I do it very, very differently, and even if I don't like it, to your point, that I accept it. We don't have that. We don't have it enough. We don't make that explicit enough.

It's just easier to get in a routine where you don't try anymore. People, I don't know, they think that there's somebody out there that they're just going to always get along with there. There's not. When you start sharing space and obligations and all that stuff with somebody, there's always going to be friction. I mean, not all every minute. But it doesn't matter who it is, you're going to have friction with them.

And you want that! That's part of the difference. That's part of the juice of the mystery.

Yeah, and it's part of what helps you be a better person and grow yourself. When you and your spouse are just not seeing eye-to-eye, I like to think of it as, you're standing on opposite sides of a cul-de-sac. So you have this cul-de-sac, and in the middle of that cul-de-sac, you've got a telephone pole that's got a light at the top. On one side of that, you're standing on one side, so you're at three o'clock and they're at nine o'clock. You're looking at the telephone pole, you say: Hey honey, you see that woodpecker on the telephone pole. Your spouse says, that's a squirrel. You're like, squirrels don't have two legs and a beak. They're like, woodpeckers don't have four legs and a furry tail. You can see what's going on here. Well, they're both looking at opposite sides of the telephone pole. So they think they're looking at the same thing, but they're not.

So you were talking about perspective, and what's important to remember is your perspective is always incomplete. It can never be complete. It's always missing part of the information. So we might go: Oh wait, they might be looking at something different. I can see a woodpecker because it's on my side of the pole, but maybe there is a squirrel over there. But then, your inclination is to go, well, first I've got to help them see the woodpecker first. So come over here and you'll see that it's a woodpecker. They're like, no, come over here and you'll see that it's a squirrel. So that's where we get stuck more, is we try to get them to come to our side of the cul-de-sac. The best way to move forward here is we go over to their side of the cul-de-sac and say: Oh, now I see the squirrel, now will you come with me? So we're affirming, we're accepting their perspective, and now they're going to be a lot more willing to come and see the woodpecker. But we do the opposite. We try to go, please come over here. We try to get them to come to our side first and see it from our perspective.

Yes. Jon, I would add, I don't know if you would agree, that perhaps in my case, like I just explained, my husband might call the woodpecker a woodpecker. But let's say I've always known it to be something totally different. So when I walk over to that side, I'm like: Oh okay, it's a woodpecker for you, but I would've said something else. It's just sometimes our languaging can be so entirely different.

I know we're really getting close to winding down here. So one question I want to ask you, being in the shallow end and creating this safety and this acceptance, how does vulnerability start to then become? Because I'm sure some people are thinking, you could stay in the shallow end and you could talk about stuff that's a little safer and feel this sense of acceptance. But does that mean there's just a lot of no-go zones, or how do you start to enter back into the deep end?

That's when you have intimacy. That can happen in all kinds of ways—it can happen sexually, it can happen just watching a sunset, you don't have to say stuff. But most of the time with couples, it's happening either in sex or in conversation. So in conversation, that's that shallow end, what you're doing is you are testing out, can I be vulnerable with you and will you accept me? If so, then we can take a step together a little bit deeper, and so we become a little bit more intimate.

So an example is, when I went out on my first date with Joanna, I was a country boy, small town, west Texas. Lived outside of that small town and was in Future Farmers of America (FFA), and raised show pigs and grew wheat in our field, all that kind of stuff. My wife had just moved from urban Austin, preppy school. I don't know if that's still a term, but anyway. This was 1982. The number one pop band that year was a group called Air Supply, I think they had three #1 hits. To me, I thought at that time—you can see now, this is pretty much true of any genre of music you can think of here—but to me, in 1982, I only thought there was two legitimate forms of music: country and classic rock. To me, pop music was like, you start off with Sesame Street, and then you graduated to pop music, but then you're supposed to be out of that by the time you're out of middle school. That's my thought.

So one of the first questions we're doing on first date, we're doing this back and forth, what kind of music do you like? I said, what kind of music do you like? She said, I love Air Supply, which to me, that was the worst answer I could have heard. Now I had a choice at that moment, I could've spoke my mind and said, when are you going to grow up? By the way, I have pop music here now too, I've got an Air Supply album here. But if I'd have spoken my mind, what I was thinking, then probably, nowadays she would've called an Uber, and we wouldn't have finished the date. But instead, I said: Hey, did you know they're going to be in town in a couple months, would you like to go? I didn't like Air Supply. But I was picturing myself in that moment, standing up at the concert with her, with a big smile on my face, and singing along to the few lyrics that I knew, and having a great time. Because I like Air Supply? No, I couldn't stand them. But because I was sharing something that mattered to her with her, I got to be a part of that.

You fast forward five years later, we've been married for a few years now, and we're at our low point, and we're in the car and an Air Supply song comes on. I'm reaching for the Change the Station knob, and she's reaching for the Turn It Up knob. I'm saying something like, when are you going to grow up, move on to some mature music. And I'm wondering why is my marriage struggling at that point. That was too long a story to make that point.

No, I love it. I do really appreciate it, I think people relate to stories that really are so very real. I appreciate that you didn't lie. Like, you didn't say: Oh, I love Air Supply too. And you both were perhaps in a state where you weren't in the practice of some of the things we're talking about here today. So perhaps, maybe you could even say that now, and it would've been a joke or something that would've been a little bit more playful. Because there is so much goodwill, there is so much safety around: you're my person, you're my number one, and that's solid. But in a state when you said it's at a low, that's really difficult to communicate that rejection. I think we can tolerate a little bit more.

Year three of our marriage, I could have joked about that. I can now.

Yeah. Jon, I know there's so much more you have to share. I'm curious if there's anything you really wanted to get to that we didn't get to, before we wrap up.

It's fun to talk shop, so I could go on for another couple hours. Except my family is waiting for me at my daughter's to watch the game tonight.

Oh, fun. Great! Well, let's talk about how people can access your book. Tell us a little bit about the name and where they can find it.

Okay. Actually, this book came out first right before COVID, that's another long story, but the second edition just came out a few months ago. It's called The Acceptance: What Brings and Keeps Lifelong Love. You've probably read and I've read tons of marriage books. Most marriage books are about how-to and tools and stuff, which is good. But that's a whole nother chapter in this book about marriage help. It's called Marriage Help. Sometimes reading marriage help books can make things worse. So this is why I thought I needed to write a book that goes back and explains why certain tools work, how does communication get off the rails in the first place, and intimacy and all that stuff. So that's what I'm hoping to do with this book is help people see what's at the core of all this, and then how does that play out throughout the life of the relationship.

Yes, really helping people see it exemplified. Then again, the storytelling is just so helpful for people to learn and relate to and have a deeper understanding and find themselves in it. I love it. So I'll make sure to put the link, but tell us where you would want people to access the book.

You can get it on Amazon. Amazon is going to have both versions. I've been trying to get them to get the old one off. But the old version pops up first. Barnes and Noble has it on their website. Pretty much any major book distributor has it. Or you can go to our website and get it. By the way, also, if you have a couple, I don't know if you do intensives, but we do intensives down here in the Texas area. They can order it off our website too or find out more about our intensives.

Excellent. So tell us a little bit about your intensives. I know there's so much more they can find on your website. And what is your website?

It's www, that's the easy part. GrowingLoveNetwork.org. So we do about every six weeks or so. Our next one is coming up in January 24th through 26th. It'll be our 171st intensive. It's a three-day. You're there all day for three days as a couple, and you're gonna get further in those three days than you would if, and you know how this works too. If a couple can stick it out in counseling or therapy for as long as they need to just make a breakthrough, you're going to get much further along. Then what we do is we send you right back, we have a big referral of a list of people. Hey, if you just don't think that counselor therapist is working out for you, well, here's some people that we know and trust. But we send them right back, and then we break through this thing called triangulation in that weekend, and they just get way further down the road in those three days than they would probably in six months of therapy. So then they can go to their counselor or therapist, and they're at a place that they can actually start building now instead of just, I don't know if you've discussed triangulation on the show.

Well, if you want to briefly describe it, then I would encourage you to. I just also recognize that if somebody is doing weekly or even biweekly, it's just what's happening throughout the week, that then sometimes people need to get some support around. If you're in an intensive, not only do you have the facilitator and the staff to help, but it's almost this group energy that allows for a little bit more depth. But then you don't have this stop and backwards forward, it's just a deep dive that it really allows. Did you want to just briefly explain the triangulation before we hop off?

Oh, okay. So doing therapy counseling with couples is totally different dynamics than one-on-one. When you go by yourself to a counselor or therapist, you're asking to help me feel, think, or do better. When a couple comes, their agenda is, help my spouse think or feel or do better. So that's what they're bringing. So they spend so much of the first several, if not all, just trying to help the therapist understand what's wrong with their spouse so they can fix their spouse. They're both doing this, so it just becomes a finger-pointing and it gets everybody off real easy. So the rules of the way we do intensives is we just put all this aside. You're not going to sit with a therapist or a counselor, we're going do something different. So they're focused on their self for those three days, not on what they can't control, which is their spouse.

I love it. Jon, thank you so much for your book and for what you've shared here today, it's been a great honor. I'll make sure to have all the links that you've mentioned on today's show notes.

Oh, this was a lot of fun. Thank you very much.