Esther Perel

I may actually be able to tell you, hey, you're not going to lose face and you don't have to feel like you're giving in and giving up if you talk to me two days before and I'm not going to attack you.

Can we sit and just look at what happened here?

So I'll help you with the three days.

It's not just the middle because it's nice to meet in the middle ground.

It's that I have something you don't have.

Yeah, where did you learn to need three days?

I think that something that would be very useful for all your listeners is the typical thing is to say what you fight about rather than what is it that you're fighting for.

And when you look at what people fight for,

Howard Markman summarized it really beautifully.

He's a researcher on couples.

And he said, people fight about a few major things.

The first one is people fight for power and control.

Whose decisions matter most?

Whose needs get priority?

Who gets to decide?

much of our fighting is actually about power and control it doesn't matter if it looks like it's about money or the kids or the parents or my activities or your friends the second thing we fight about is care and closeness can i trust you do you have my back will you look out for me can i rely on you

And we don't say, I fight about trust.

We fight about, you didn't call me and you didn't tell me we're going to be late.

And you didn't tell me that you had visited these people and you didn't share that with me.

And I didn't know you tell chat GPT this and that, you know, care and closeness.