Why your relationships are NOT working

The people who are autonomically aroused, whose blood is flowing faster, whose hearts are beating faster, who are sweating more, over a 3-year period, their relationships deteriorated. Interesting. And the reason we figured out was that they're really close to being in fight or flight. They're secreting cortisol and adrenaline, our 2 stress hormones. And when you do that, when you're physiologically aroused that way, you're in fight or flight. You can't even process information very well. You can't listen very well. You're certainly not a creative problem solver because you feel Like running, or you feel like just shutting your partner down. It's so aversive. So the autonomic nervous system plays a really big role. And what we've learned is that when people get flooded— that's our term for physiological arousal, general arousal— it's really important to take a break.