Love 2.0: How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 2
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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. When things go wrong in our relationships, we often try to change the way our partners behave. We tell ourselves that if only they would change their ways, we could be happy. Of course, the problem is our partners are saying the same thing about us. Last week, we explored the power of a radically different approach. Acceptance. Instead of trying to change our partners, Clark University psychologist James Cordova says there's growing evidence that we will end up in much happier relationships if we can accept our partners for who they are. If you missed that story, you can find it in this podcast feed. It's titled, How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 1. Today, we look at one of the most toxic things we do in intimate relationships.
Changing this behavior is not easy, and the ideas we explore today can be a tough pill to swallow. If the thing that we most want in our relationship is to feel that sense of love and connection and acceptance for each other, this is my relationship. I have to take responsibility for what happens in every moment. And everything that I do and say matters. How to become wiser in our relationships. It's the latest in our Love 2.0 series. This week on Hidden Brain.
So much of our distress in relationships comes about not only because we want to change another person but find ourselves unable to do so, but because we sense that the other person could change if they wanted to and just isn't trying hard enough. If I feel you can fix a problem but can't be bothered to do it, surely I'm justified in blaming you. Psychologist James Cordova has spent many years studying this particular cycle in relationships. James, can you talk about the role that blame plays as we try and change another person? This is a fundamental psychological characteristic for all of us. Whenever we experience distress with other people, we let ourselves off the hook. That can't possibly be my fault.
Everything that I do is completely understandable and justifiable. So therefore, it has to be your fault. And we're raised in a culture, we come out of a place where... We imagine that the way to solve a problem starts with figuring out who's to blame. And then once we figure out who's to blame, then we know how to solve the problem. And in relationships, that almost never helps. It almost always follows the pattern of you're to blame. No, I'm not. You're to blame. No, I'm not. You're to blame. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. You're to blame. You're to blame. And we can spend years in that spot in our relationship, trying to convince the other person that I'm not to blame, you are. I would say in the history of history, that approach to trying to solve problems in our intimate relationships has never actually worked.
What you just said, James, reminds me of a conversation I had with another Hidden Brain guest some time ago. He said that when we were in high school, we often would go into debate championships or debate tournaments where you would try and make your case and then somebody else would make their case. And then a judge would decide who had the better argument and would award one person the trophy of the winner. And he was pointing out that we often approach our relationships in regular life the same way that we approach debate championships. We assume that if we make our argument persuasively enough, that a neutral party, a judge, is going to somehow come and hand us the award, the trophy, and say, you are right, the other person is wrong, you've won, the debate is over.
But of course, in real life, there is no judge. It's just two people who are both debating one another with no one to actually settle the debate. That's so true. And oftentimes when they come to therapy, they want me to be the judge and they're very disappointed when I won't do it. Yeah, no, absolutely. Like tell us which one of us is right. And of course it's me, right? And the way that I think about that and the way that I talk to couples about that is it's like two fire hoses pointed at each other.
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