James Cordova

I want to go out and do something fun.

If I'm an introvert, I've had an exhausting week.

I want to sit on the couch and watch TV.

And we're going to fight every time about that.

That seems to be the main thing that happens.

When you have a conflictual couple together in the lab, it looks like they're terrible at communicating.

And it looks like they're terrible at problem solving.

Like they actually have a skill deficit.

But if you take those two people,

and pair them with two strangers, suddenly they're really good at communicating and really good at problem solving.

And so the implication of that isn't so much that they lack a skill, it's that the emotional environment in their relationship has become so

toxic, so poisonous, so conflictual that they're not actually willing to collaborate.

They're not willing to use the good communication and problem-solving skills that they actually have because I don't want to problem-solve effectively with you.

I'm mad at you.

It is the most common way that couples come into therapy, stuck in this, it's almost like one of the analogies we use is it's like a Chinese finger trap, right?

Like each of them is pulling so hard for change that the harder they try to make things better,

the tighter the trap becomes.

And they exhaust themselves.

They frustrate each other so completely that often they find themselves in a spot where the only way that they can see forward towards some sort of escape is either therapy or divorce.

In this couple, the husband and his son just had a long history of being able to get into these deep, sometimes hilarious conversations about world politics, which wasn't a particular interest to his wife.