You Can Be Right or You Can Be Married: Rebuilding Communication, Trust, and Love with Brett Williams (Episode #45)

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Something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Welcome to the Human intimacy podcast. I'm Dr. Kevin Skinner. Today I have a good friend of mine. We've been friends, we're working on over almost 15 years. My friend Brett Williams, who, he and I have been working together on and off for the last 15 years. Absolutely delighted to have you with us, Brett. Brett, welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast.

I am so glad to be here. This, this legacy thing that you're creating is awesome. I am just so excited about what you're doing and excited to participate too. But I love the Human Intimacy. The concept, the idea of, you know, creating this legacy for people.

Well, I am glad to have you with me. Brett and I actually met in San Francisco many years ago. He was doing a smart marriage conference and he and I just, and our team just hit it off. And anyway, just absolutely delightful friendship. We actually off as often as we can. On Mondays we go to lunch together. I want to tell you a little bit about Brett. He's been doing therapy for 35 years now. I'm going to tell you what's amazing about that. Yeah, there's like that ha, right? That's just awesome.

Right?

But for 35 years. And you know, the reality is is most therapists don't last five years. And, and so I want to start off just telling you this is a man who's done a lot of marriage and family therapies, had a tremendous impact on people's lives. And he's the author of a really, this is really what we're going to be talking about today. He's the author of the book you Can Be Right or your Can Be Married. So Brett, I'm actually going to ask you two questions. One is I'm going to ask you to talk about the book. But before we do that, 35 years of being a therapist. Tell us a little bit about that. What have you learned?

Well, I actually. My dad was a marriage and family therapist before me, and so this idea of therapy and being a therapist has kind of been in my head since I was a kid. I love it. I really find people are hungry. I am hungry for answers, for solutions, for direction, and. And that's kind of my passion, is to help people get the answers they need to be able to work through their lives, but particularly with marriage, because I really find this may sound terrible to start the podcast, but I find that our training as a marriage and family therapist is inadequate. And most therapists treat couples like they're individuals. And we'll often do that. We'll often just kind of divide the couples and say, oh, let's do some individual work here. Let's do some individual work here. Which is all well and good, but. But they don't know how to work with a couple as a couple. And that really is, in my mind, what makes therapy for couples different is the marriage is the third client in the room. So, yeah, I have the man. Yeah, I have the woman. And, yeah, they're going to work on their issues, but the marriage itself, the connection, the union, the relationship you guys have is itself a entity that needs answers, that needs solutions, that needs tools, that need resources. And so that's really kind of been my passion, is to fill that void that I see in therapy, which is really just helping find answers for the marriage.

Yeah. And so I'm going to just go off of this because it's been my experience as well. I mean, combined, we've got 65 years of therapy. And one of the things that I would say is, as an observer, many couples, and I'm not going to say all couples, but many couples, when it comes to conflict, when it comes to challenges, adversity in the relationship, they really are struggling. And I really think that's where, you know, something like your book, you know, you can be right or you can be married. Let's talk a little bit about that, because I think it really introduces our topic today.

Yeah, I came up with the title, but. But it's always been interesting to me because not everybody gets it. Not everybody gets the title. And usually the people that don't understand the title are couples that have only been married a year, two years, three years, people that have Been married a decade or more. Oh, they get it. They just look at it and go, oh, yeah, got it. Understand that newlyweds are like, what? I'm not sure I understand. Yeah, you need to be married a little bit longer. Sorry about that. But it comes really down to this simple idea that in 35 years of working with couples, this is really all we fight about. It's kind of an amazing concept. But all the conflicts that I've ever experienced, seen, heard, processed, helped deal with, they're all rooted in this primary problem, which is what I call the right fight. My number one step in therapy is helping couples disengage the right fight. And then, and then once we've disengaged the right fight, then begin to teach them new skills. And in fact, I couples counseling, I do three things with my couples. I teach them specifically, speaker skills, how to talk so your partner can listen, listening skills, how to listen so your partner can talk. And then connection skills, what to do to bond, to bring that bond back into the relationship that's often been lost.

The nuts and bone.

And so you can be right or you can be married. Really speaks to that beginning skill, the speaker skill, that's really at the root of the initial problems, at least. But I don't feel like that's the answer. I don't feel like that's the whole answer. I think that's the. Where they begin and where they get stuck initially. But just getting them out of the right fight isn't good enough. We have to teach them how to communicate correctly and we have to rebuild the relationship. Just because you can talk to each other now does not guarantee. I'm sorry, does not guarantee that all that love and passion and connection and intimacy that you had before is just going to come flooding back because you guys can talk about things a little bit better. No, it is an important skill, one of the first skills we work on. But there has to be more to therapy in terms of working with couples. And that's where the second title, the subtitle is Love Based Solutions. We gotta come up with some love based solutions to get this couple together again.

All right, so I really think what you're saying here, the nuts and the bolts of human connection, human communication, human relationships, because really, you're talking more in depth. And I really think that a lot of people almost take these things for granted, as if they should know how to do them. And in my experience is that we don't know how to do them, we don't do them well. And then when we get into conflict, when we have problems, we get stuck. So those parts that you just described, and I want to go into this in your book and if anyone has a copy, page 29. And, and this is what we call the changing focus and goals of our discussions. And I'd really like to talk a little bit about that because you talk about communicating, correcting and combating what I think you refer to as the, the three C's. Right, right. It's communicating, correcting, combating. Let's talk a little bit about those for a second. So yeah, what, what is the communicating, what is the correcting and what is the combating as you, as you identify and how does it, it influence relationships?

Sure. There's actually four. The first ones chitchat. And what I'm trying to can do with my couples is help them begin to step back and analyze their own communication. There's this terrible, awful idea that if I'm feeling upset, that gives me the right to just share with you my upset because I'm upset. And we don't understand that there's a correct way to share that upset, a way that's going to be useful, helpful, valuable, that actually the other person is going to be able to hear. And then there's ways that you're going to communicate that aren't useful. By breaking it down into four categories, I'm helping couples see what are the general categories that we do communicate on. And the other thing about these four Cs which is really helpful for couples is is they progress in levels as the energy in a particular person or in the couple themselves, as the energy escalates, you'll see the conversations kind of devolve into these different patterns. So the first one is chitchats, the first seat chitchat.

You didn't add that the chitchat part of the book, did you?

Maybe that's a later addition.

Oh, oh, it's an addition. Okay.

So I'm like, but, but that's the first level. Couples just chit chat with each other. How's your day? What's going on? Yeah, the kids surface level conversation. Yeah. And that's pretty low energy. There's not a lot of tension, there's not a lot of upset. So chit chat's nice. But the downside of chitchat is that there's not a lot of intimacy either. There's not a lot of connection. It's superficial.

If we sit there, it's empty.

Well, it's a superficial conversation. It creates a superficial relationship. Sorry. Second Level, it's a little bit higher. My energy is a little bit more accelerated. I'm feeling a little bit more intense, a little bit more upset. In the second level, I call it communication. In the second level of, of communication. And this is where the ultimate goal of the book comes in, is I want to teach couples how to talk about what's wrong, not who's wrong, what's wrong. I'm sad, I'm hurt, I'm frustrated, I'm scared, I'm feeling unsafe, I'm feeling betrayed. There is no limit to sharing what's wrong. You can share anything, but it has to be about what's wrong as opposed to who's wrong. Well, you did and you did and this, and you didn't do this, and you should have done that. Now we're back in the right fight. That's when we move to level three. Now we're correcting each other. We're not communicating our pain, we're correcting the other person. And I guarantee it kind of depends on where the spouse is in terms of the betrayal process. But most of the time, spouses get really defensive. And even when they're not defensive, they're like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. I'm a, I'm a piece of dirt, I'm a piece of trash, which isn't necessarily useful anyway for building intimacy and communication. So that's the second, the third level, which is correcting each other. And that's where we've shifted from what's wrong to who's wrong. And, and whenever you have somebody right, you know, I feel like, you know, I feel like I have a right to my feelings or right to, to my issues. And I communicated that way, well, I'm going to make my partner wrong. And that's what happens. They make your partner wrong. Then as the fight continues to escalate in energy, chit chat, usually zero to three, communication, moving from forward, five, six. Now I'm seven and eight and I'm getting into my right fights. Then eight and nine, 10. I'm in this combat mode. And in the combat mode, the agenda changes again altogether. Instead of just the superficial check in to this more intimate communication to this right fight. Now it changes to, you know what? I want to hurt you because you hurt me. That's the agenda of combat mode. And I'll say things that I may not really mean, but I want to hurt you because I feel hurt. And I feel like somehow that's going to help my hurt to hurt you back.

Yeah. And when we do that, then we would say from a physiological perspective, we're in a fight response, right? Oh, yeah.

Eight, nine, ten. Yeah, you're, you're totally escalated. Your nervous system is off the charts. Yeah.

And so I want to go back to the one, the correcting one. Right. Because we've talked about the, you know, you got the chit chat, you got the communication, and then you went to combat and that maybe the seven, eight, that, that correcting. Let's talk a little bit about that because I think that's also a common tool that people use. Well, you did. They're correcting a behavior. They're correcting something that their partner's feeling or experiencing. Is that, is that how you would describe that?

Yeah, yeah. Why is it not useful? Intuitively you would think, oh, there's a problem. Correcting the problem would be the right answer. Makes sense. Except you're so escalated in that moment. Your nervous system is in fight or flight response, your corrections come out as an attack, and then the other person is going to get defensive. That's what's going to happen. The other thing that's happening, maybe on a more unconscious level is, is you've hurt my feelings by doing something or saying something or by not doing something or not saying something. And I'm wounded. If I share that wound with you, if I communicate with you, my wound, I'm making myself vulnerable. But if I correct you in my mind, I can share the problem without being intimate, without being vulnerable, without being raw, without taking a risk to get hurt again. So that's why couples go into that combative mode. Not the combative, yes, but also the correcting mode, because it's a way they think they're going to solve the problem without being vulnerable, without being intimate, without sharing their feelings. Never works. Never works. And that's where the book title comes from. You can be right or you can be married. Because those right fights, those that correcting never works. It will never, ever, ever produce connection for you.

All right, so I can imagine our listeners are saying, okay, so now you've told us what doesn't work because we do these things, right? We do the chit chat and it seems surface level, we're trying to communicate, but it's not going too great. Then we begin to escalate into the corrective mode. You know, if you would, if you should, you should do this, this, this, this, and then really the combative mode, where it's really, you've hurt me, I'm going to hurt you back the, you know, World War Three type of mindset. So what do we do as an alternative to those ineffective Cs?

Yeah, the. The second C is what we're shooting for. The first and first and second are where a healthy relationship lives. Chitchat, Very normal for a relationship. It's needed for a relationship. I wouldn't live there because it is superficial. Communication creates more intimacy. But that's not going to happen every day. Every day I'm not going to open up and share my feelings. Oh, today I'm feeling so hurt or sad or whatever. So the first two are the healthy relationship. As the nervous system escalates, as the polyvagal theory would tell us, I'm starting to move into a sympathetic arousal instead of my parasympathetic. That's where things break down. So the question was, what's the answer? The answer is I gotta stay in these lower levels. This lower energy level analogy I, I like to use. Maybe it sounds kind of silly, but there's a difference between American teacups and Chinese teacups.

That's true.

American teacups have a handle. Chinese teacups don't. The Chinese teacups make so much more sense. Because if that cup is too hot for me to pick up and handle it, then it's too hot for me to drink it. But. But if I have a handle on my cup, I'm not going to know. I'm not going to know how hot that is. And so I'm going to drink it and burn my mouth. That's what's going on with couples is that sometimes they're too hot. They're too hot to have the conversation. I don't care what skills you have, how much therapy you've done. If your nervous system is a 7, 8, 9 or 10, that conversation is going to go bad. So the first thing we got to do is take ownership and responsibility of my nervous system, of where I am, how escalated I am, and get my numbers down. Maybe I need to journal. Maybe I need to go on a walk. Maybe I need to sleep on it. Maybe I need to call a friend and process. Maybe I just need to hang out with my dog. But I need to get my numbers down. Because if I'm 8, 9, 10, there is no way that conversation is going to go well. It's just not. All the skills in the world aren't going to help you if you're too escalated.

And Dr. John Gottman says if our heart rate's escalated over 100 beats per minute, then we're going to be ineffective in communication. So really, that's when you start to see the corrective part. And then really, as we escalate into going to call it criticisms, that's what he uses, the criticisms, the contempt. Right. Those are additional Cs. Right. So we'll add them to the list here. But I think what's interesting there is this art of communication. Effective communication is also a physiological. Right.

Yeah.

It's a. Our body has to be in a place where we're not escalated, otherwise we're in a fight orf flight response, because the body protects itself. The body is in a space where it's like, I don't feel safe here, or you want to fight, I'll fight. And that's where we see that escalation that you're talking about, that combative.

Yeah.

All right, I want to now shift gears because this kind of leads us into this next one. And it's. It's a story at the end of your book. And you. You titled the chapter Confessing. And when I first read was reading through that, I'm like, how. But what's going on here? But you talk about a story. You're working as a waitress. Waiter.

Waiter. Waiter. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I was thinking about the waitress who. Who did something. Right. I was thinking about this. So the waiter. But a waitress that you didn't know very well, apparently, but you thought she hated. You come to find out that you have different religious beliefs and you're praying over your food, which you and I, we pray over our food. That's what we do. You're praying. She grabs the salt. I'm trying to get the story. She grabs the salt shaker. And as you're finishing your prayer, you're seeing her conclude, pouring salt on your meal. This is somebody you really don't know very well. Now walk us through this story as it applies to what you call confessing, because I think this is really interesting for our listeners to hear.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is going to blow away again, one of the myths that we have about communicating as couples. Most of the time, we think of our communication as a dialogue dial to people. Actually, our communications should be monologues. One person. I'm a speaker. You're the listener. I need to share with you what I'm thinking and feeling. And so that's very much the story in this situation is I'm working my way through graduate school. I grew up poor. I didn't have any money. So I'm working as a waiter at in Eagle Rock. If anybody knows Scarantino's. Beautiful, nice restaurant.

Must be good food, huh?

Oh, so beautiful. Yeah. So good. So I'm working at Scaratino's. Normal kind of policy was at the end of our shift, we could all sit down and eat and get a free meal. So that always helped with my budget. You know, I could. I'm going to eat the restaurant. And. And the gal sitting across from me at our table after the restaurant is closed is a young Muslim gal. And at that time, there was just a lot of tension between Christians and Muslims, as there still is even now. And so, yeah, as you shared in the story, I'm sitting there praying, and she's seeing me somehow declaring my Christianity, which was not my intent, because I always pray. It doesn't matter who's sitting at the table with me, who's not. I'm not shoving her face in any particular way, like, oh, I'm going to pray just to offend you. I always pray. That's just what I do. Didn't mean to be offensive. That wasn't my heart's desire, wasn't my intention. I think she took it that way. And so, like you said, she took the salt shaker, dumped it out on my meal, and I'm like, thanks. Thanks a lot. Luckily, I just took it back to the cooks and said, guys, could you wash this off and reheat it and resource it? And of course, all the cooks, the kitchen's closed. And, dude, just thanks. Just do it. Come on, let's just not make a big deal. Let's do it so they do it. I don't go without a meal. I'm not. I'm not starving because of it, but I feel my energy escalating. I feel myself kind of ruminating on this, kind of getting ticked off. And I'm thinking about, okay, how am I going to tell this woman that she was wrong? She was wrong to do that? That was bad. She's a bad person. And. And every scenario I'm running through my head, is that going to go well? How is any of that going to go well? How could I possibly say this, where I'm going to shame her, criticize her, put her down, and she's going to take it well. No scenario. No scenario whatsoever. So I dial back again. I'm breathing, I'm dropping my nervous system, and I'm thinking, okay, what's my real goal here? Is my real goal to get this woman to see she's a bad human being? No, that's not really my Goal, my real goal, if you really want me to confess. What do I really want? I want to get rid of all this energy, this negative energy. I'm frustrated, I'm hurt, I'm upset, I'm agitated. I need to share with her so I can release these feelings because they're toxic. They're. They're eating me up inside. So I switch my goal from who's wrong level three to what's wrong my level two, communication. So I just simply want to go up to her and I want to communicate. Hey, I gotta be honest with you. I've been really kind of frustrated, annoyed, angry. I've been angry all night because you poured salt of my meal. And I just don't want to feel angry anymore. And so I just wanted to come and apologize to you that I've been holding all this negative energy and just confess it. So share so I can let it go so I don't have to keep it in my head anymore. Again, monologue. I don't care what she had to respond. I didn't ask her her side. I don't even care what her side was. My goal was a monologue. My goal was to share these upset feelings so I'm not spinning. And if she wants to share her feelings, okay, I'm not going to require it. I'm not going to put her on the spot because I don't think that's going to go very well. So I just focus on my side of the street, as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm just going to clean my side of the street and just make sure I'm taking care of me. And so that's the idea of a confession. And really that's what I think true communication should be, is a confession. Hey, I need to let you know I'm hurt, I'm scared, I'm frustrated, I feel disappointed, I feel unsafe. It's a confession. Will the other person change? Don't know. Will the other person say something that will magically make it okay with you? Probably not. There's nothing to say. You're confessing your feelings and that's what you need to do. That's good communication. But it's a monologue, not some dialogue, because that's not going to happen.

Oh, well, let's. Let's go down that path. So I'm going to role play a couple of scenarios, right? Because I don't. I don't know the full extent of her response because I didn't see that. But let's just say her response Is, well, you were making fun of my religion. Right. I just feel like you were being disrespectful. Praying.

The majority of tiffs couples have are about that. About tiffs. Couples think they know what the other person is thinking, intending and feeling. Tif. Tiff. It's not in the book. But anyway, man, I'll tell you, you're.

Gonna have to write your second book or.

I know, I got it. I gotta mend this thing. But. But at that point, what she's telling me is my tiff. She's telling me what I was intending, what I was thinking, what I was feeling. All I can do at that moment is go, oh, I'm sorry, that's what you've believed. I'm sorry, that's what you thought. I can hear that was your reality. That's not where I'm coming from. That's not my reality. But I can totally hear and acknowledge that's how you saw it. Okay.

Would you say, I pray everywhere I go again, if.

If my goal was to be defensive and defend myself? If I saw myself. And couples do this way too often. They see themselves in a court of law and. And they're trying to, you know, give a counterpoint. Yeah, I. I would probably do that. I see that going nowhere. I see that going nowhere with her. So trying to convince her what my intentions were or who I am or what I'm about, I can't control that.

So simply saying, I need to let out this. I need to confess. I've been angry, I've been hurt, I've been scared, or whatever the context is. You're basically putting down your emotions as they are experienced. I'm feeling angry and letting that be the story.

Yeah. And the other person's going to come back and they're going to try and share their story. Like. Like you were saying in that kind of role play, that's a really highly likely situation. I would suggest as a therapist, you don't go there. I'm the speaker. I want and need that person just to hear me. If that person has a story of their own that they want to share, that's a different conversation. That's not this conversation. So at that point, I'd be like, oh, okay, I didn't understand your feelings. I didn't know, you know, I obviously don't know what you're thinking and feeling. You're the expert on you. I. I'm the expert on me. I can. I can hear. At that point, I switched the listener. I can hear that. That's your perception. That's your reality. That's your story. That's your truth. Is that my truth? No, no. I pray all the time. I didn't pray to offend you. That's my truth. But that's not her truth.

Right.

So I would, at that point, if that was the. If that's how she was going to respond, I would just say, hey, I can, I can hear that was your truth. That's not my truth, but I can hear that's your truth.

And, and we're taking away the defensiveness.

We're, we're.

And in that situation, you're becoming the listener. As you often, as you began this podcast with, right, am I the speaker? Am I the listener? What's my role? And in this situation now, okay, now I'm listening to her perspective here. I can see that that's your perspective or your viewpoint. That's not where I came from, but I can understand what you've said there.

Okay.

And what we're doing is we're getting a lot of clarification here. And, and there's something, again, you use the interesting phrase here. That's why I wanted to choose this topic, that concept of confession or this part of your book, because you call it a confession. And I want to highlight that because how often when we speak to people, do we not speak truths, partial truths, or we avoid the issue because we don't want conflict, and so we don't actually talk about our hurt, our frustrations. And in some situations, because we don't, we become more resentful because we're not communicating our truths.

Right? Yep. And I really think for me and my perception of couples, that really is rooted in the primary human need, which is safety. If that person is not confessing, not sharing with their intimates what they're feeling, thinking what's going on for them, it's because they're not feeling safe. If I share, like you said, if I share, maybe they'll get mad and they'll yell at me or they'll start a fight. And so they just don't feel safe. And that's so unfortunate. That is one of the first issues that we have to do is create a safe place for everybody. Share. And. And one of the rules I use to create a safe place is one speaker, one listener, not a dialogue, no monologue. Confession. Confession time.

All right. Really good. Really good way to look at this. And again, to our listeners, I hope you're making sense of this and really can think of application to your relationship. I want to now shift our energy. This is something in your book, you talk about what love is. And I really want to emphasize this because, you know, I think love is. Even in your book, you talk about what is love? And I think our culture, it's so ambiguous. You know, what define it. What is love? And if we asked 100 people, I'm not sure we would even come up with, you know, we would get some parallels or some commonality, but I think we would have a lot. A wide range of definition. Brett Williams, 35 years of doing therapy. What is love?

Yeah, it embarrasses me to think, gosh, here we are as science, and we just can't even answer such basic questions like, what is love? Well, to me, love is the free gift of our attention. So if I'm going to love a baby, a lot of times when I ask people, what is love? You'll hear things like, oh, love is trust. Love is putting the other person first. Love is, you know, all these things. But if I'm loving a baby, how do I communicate to a baby? Oh, I'm going to put your needs first, or I'm going to build trust with you. Or all those concepts just go out the window. When I want to show love to my little puppy over here, how do I do that? It's attention. It's always attention. When I love my dog, I give them attention. When my dog loves me, my dog gives me attention. When I love a baby, I give it attention. When the baby shows love for me, the baby gives me attention. Love and attention are synonymous. They're inseparable to the point where I cannot show love for somebody without showing attention. My example is, if I'm telling my wife how wonderful she is, and I'm sitting here on my phone watching sports or news or whatever it is, the words are meaningless. Oh, I love you. You're awesome. Oh, dang it. You're just so amazing. I think you're a great mom. Those words mean nothing because there's no attention attached to it. But the reverse is also true. I don't even have to worry about those words. I just have to bring attention. If I'm sitting and listening to my spouse, making eye contact, giving them my full and undivided attention, I don't have to say, honey, I love you. They feel it because I'm giving them my undivided attention. Gary Chapman writes the great book, Everybody loves it, Everybody knows it, the five Love Languages. And if you break it down and look at what is Gary Chapman talking about? He's talking about attention. Those five love languages are just simply paths, ways of bringing attention. And all he's saying in the book is, some people like attention or receive attention better than other ways. Now, in this book, I break it down a little bit differently than he did. I break it down because my wife's a teacher. Whenever she's doing a lesson plan, she's always planning for the students that are auditory. How can I help my auditory students learn? How can I help my visual students learn? How can I help my kinesthetic, my physical students learn? Because not everybody receives attention in the same way. And so understanding how people receive attention, which is the theme of Gary Chapman's book, is an appropriate exercise. That's very appropriate because oftentimes stereotypical. But I, as a guy, give attention in a language that makes sense to me. Being kinesthetic, being physical. Walk into the house. My wife's in the kitchen, I grab her butt. Hey, babe. In my mind, what am I saying? I love you. In her mind, not so much.

Yeah, that generally doesn't turn out very well.

Yeah, exactly. That's not her love language, if we're using Chapman's verbiage. So even though I'm giving her attention, she's not receiving the attention because I'm not paying attention enough to know what kind of attention she appreciates the most. Instead, I'm taking the easy path, which is bringing her the attention that I want, that I value. It's about me. And so, of course, it doesn't feel loving to her because it feels like I'm just bringing attention to my own needs. And any spouse is going to be offended by that. Oh, my gosh. My spouse is just being attentive to what he wants, what he wants, or what she wants. And they don't really get me.

It's all about you, Right. It's that we often hear that it's all about you. All you want is. Right?

Yeah. And what they're saying is, is, babe, your attention is always on yourself. You love yourself more than you love me, and that's going to hurt. Absolutely.

So concept here. If we're going to give attention, we need to be aware. I'm going to use the word attuned to our spouse and the way they need attention.

Right.

Or want attention. Now, Gary Chapman would say, you know, acts of service, you know, words of affirmation, and. And again, those are. Those are possibility buckets. But maybe there's other things, right? There may be other ways that you're going to give attention to your Spouse, do we know? And are we paying enough attention to those details? So we're giving attention to the right space.

Yeah. And that's again, a gift of love. A gift of love is to sit and think it's Christmas time. What would my spouse like? What do they want? If I just get my spouse. I remember a story a few years back where my father in law got my mother in law a new camera. And then the rest of the day he was taking pictures. I'm like, whose gift is this? Who did you get this camera for?

Really?

That's an example of. That was a gift to himself. It wasn't really a gift to her because he wasn't paying attention to what she wanted and needed. He was paying attention to what he wanted and needed.

All right, so you have a test in here, and if you've got a copy of the book, you're going to find it on page 100. Actually, not quite 100, 102. And it's called the attention reception test. I'd love you to tell our listeners about it because I, again, it's just a good way to reflect on the ways that you're giving attention or not giving attention in your relationship. So I'd love to have you expound on that.

Yeah, I actually have an accompanying companion to the book. It's called a date night deck. And it's 52 date night ideas to rekindle and deepen your love. And it starts with that test. And basically it's just the standard same kind of test you would see if you were testing somebody in terms of how they learn best. It's that same kind of idea. Are you a visual person, are you an auditory person, or are you a kinesthetic person? Because again, understanding that how they receive attention is going to be crucial. So if my wife is auditory, then Gary Chapman's words of affirmation are going to mean something. He just creates this bucket of words of affirmation. But. But I believe if she's auditory, it's more than words of affirmation. It's your tone of voice. If my spouse is truly auditory, they're going to hear. They're going to hear frustration in my voice. They're going to be sensitive to things in my voice that maybe I'm not. And so being aware of how do I talk to my spouse, Is my voice soft? Is my voice kind? Hey, babe, could you give me a spoon from the drawer? There was no words of affirmation in that I love you or you're great or awesome. But very much so. The tone said, I love you, I care about you. If it's, oh, hey, give me a spoon, would you? You're over there by the counter. Could you grab me a spoon? I'm not paying attention to the auditory. How's that sound? She's going to feel hurt by that. And I'm going to go, what, what, what? What? Why you hurt? Oh, come on. Really? You're so sensitive. Because, again, I'm not paying attention to auditory. That's her love language. If we're going to use Gemman's turn. She's an auditory lover. She needs to hear things, but also not what you say, how you say.

It, you know, and one of the things that I think is interesting, and this is more of a question, and I'd love to have a little bit of a dialogue on this. Do you think that the way. Whether it's auditory, whether it's kinesthetic, do you think that it can change based upon how the relationship is going? For, for example, I. I'm familiar with couples who really have struggled to connect over time, and so there's not a lot of touch. And in maybe in a specific case where a wife is a little bit confused because her husband isn't touching and doesn't initiate sex and doesn't want to be physical, and it's confusing because all her friends are saying, what, you know, how much you know, their spouse is pushing for sex and wants sex. And I've got a husband that doesn't. Doesn't like this. So I wonder if it can change based upon maybe lack of it happening. Thoughts?

Yeah, I definitely think that's true. Different from Gary Chapman. He says, figure out your partner's love language and then just drill down on that. I don't necessarily think that's true. I think maybe steaks are my favorite meal. I really like steaks. But every. Every meal. Every meal. Steak. That would get old.

It would be a mistake.

Yeah, I like blue. Sure, blue's my favorite color, but every day I'm gonna wear blue. No, that doesn't make sense. So. So yes, people have preferences. True. And being aware of the preferences are good. But I really believe when I approach my spouse, I try to cover all the bases because I think they fill a void in different times, in different places. Time and place where my spouse does need physical touch. Let's sit and cuddle while we're watching a movie. And so just narrowing your mind to just one thing. No, I don't think that's a great idea. Do I need to understand what's primary. Yes. I want to make sure I hit that, but I don't want to use it exclusively. No.

Awesome. All right, so I want to just conclude with a couple of final thoughts from you. Just if you could give couples advice in terms of just what would be your key thing? If you really want to change the effectiveness of your communication, what would you want want couples to know?

That's a big question. That's a really, really big question. I think the first thing I teach my couples in helping them begin to de escalate their conversations is back to this idea. Some people like this rule better than others. I have a rule that I use with couples, and the rule is there can only be one crazy person at a time. And what that rule means is that if I am escalated, that's fine and good. But my partner, who should be the listener at that moment, needs to de escalate, because if we have two escalated people, it's not going to go well. And so that's one of the first things I get couples to begin to become conscious and aware of, that there can only be one speaker. Two speakers isn't going to work. I'm speaking, then my partner is going to speak over me, then I'm going to speak over my partner, then my partner speaks over me, and I. That's just not going to work. Only one crazy person. One person speaking, one person sharing, one person communicating, the other person. It's not your time. This is not your time to defend yourself, to justify yourself, to mansplain. Oh, my gosh, mansplaining. Stop.

You know, I want to address that because I think when couples, when it really breaks down, it requires one of the partners to have the mindset. Is my role here is to be a listener. I'm not right. I've got it. I've got to be here, present. I've got to give attention to what my spouse is saying. And if I'm willing to do that, then there will be a time where I will be the speaker and hopefully my spouse will be the listener. But that's. That's why we have to learn these skills. That's why learning these tools. If I can recommend to our listeners, you can be right or you can be married. Brett Williams, my friend, my colleague, I just really appreciate your time. Final thoughts for our listeners today.

Final thoughts. I do emphasize a lot. We have emphasized a lot communication and how important communication is. But I disagree with all my other professionals out there. I do not think communication is the end. The Beginning and the end. I think love is. I think you really, you need to work on your communication, but you really need to connect and love each other because it is out of that that your communication really flows. So if you don't love each other and if you're not in a loving space, if you guys aren't connected, it is going to be hard to communicate. Communication will be difficult because it's reflecting this disconnect that you guys have in each other's hearts. So work on your communication skills. Yes, yes, yes. That's so good and important. But you also have to rebuild the love because love is really at the heart and soul of your marriage. And so that's where I would refocus.

Couples, if I could speak to that. Brett, really, what you're saying is we've got to give attention to each other, to our relationship, to our spouse, our partner's needs. And if we do that, then we will have the opportunity to have a deeper level of intimacy.

Yeah.

All right. To our listeners want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for joining us. We are excited to announce something today. I'm excited to share it with you, Brett Williams and our team of clinicians with. Literally, if you combine us all together, there's gonna be over 15 clinicians who specialize in relationship building, overcoming addictive behaviors, dealing with betrayal, trauma. We're having the first annual Human Intimacy Conference on March 14th and 15th. It's a Friday and a Saturday. Brett is going to be one of our speakers there. He's going to be talking about is loving again possible? Talking about after sexual betrayal, and then he's talking about application of what we've talked about today, finding love based solutions for rebuilding relationships, trust and communication. Absolutely. Excited for this conference, Brett, we're excited to have you with us. And Brett, thank you so much for your time today.

All right, thank you.