Us summary

The lone genius at work in her studio. The tech whiz kid who took Silicon Valley by storm. The self-made millionaire who rose to the top of her industry without any help. Contemporary society valorizes the individual and their achievements. But in many ways, this individualism is toxic. On a broad level, thinking of ourselves as individuals rather than people who are networked within a community creates division and estrangement from the world we live in. On a more intimate level, it can also cause lasting damage to our relationships.

Relational therapy, which asks individuals to consider the ways others have shaped them and the way they’ve shaped others, seeks to move people beyond this individualistic mindset. And it's particularly valuable for couples. When two individuals can set aside their you-and-me mindset and prioritize growing their relationship, they can create rewarding and lasting intimacy. 

A quick disclaimer before we continue: the advice in this Blink is intended for couples in flawed relationships who are nevertheless committed to persevering, healing, and making things work. It doesn’t apply to anyone in a toxic or abusive relationship. 

In this Blink, you’ll learn

• why your partner can push your buttons so effectively;
• what your childhood has to do with how you approach conflict as an adult; and
• how navigating the worst conflicts together can sometimes heal your relationship.

Meet Dan and Julia. They’ve been married for seven years, but Julia has recently been considering divorce. Dan’s a nice guy, but he’s always twisting the truth and making excuses. If he’s ever five minutes late for dinner, it seems like he’s got some wild story to explain his delay. Julia’s sick of it. But Dan just can’t stop.

Dan’s dad left the scene when Dan was a toddler. His mom was strict and controlling. As a child, Dan was basically a good kid. But one single slipup, and his mom would fly off the handle. Dan’s habitual lying is actually an adaptive strategy he learned when he was young. Dan knew he could keep his mom from flying into a rage if he presented as a perfect kid all the time – and he learned to conceal the occasional adolescent slipup by being flexible with the truth.

But the strategies that served Dan well as a kid are about to torpedo his adult relationship.

Like Dan, lots of us carry our adaptive child with us. It's a normal response to our childhood trauma – and not just trauma with a capital T. For the purposes of relational psychology, trauma is any event, big or small, repetitious or a one-off, that moves someone away from a healthy emotional response to a situation and instead prompts them to develop adaptive strategies. 

It’s important to remember that your adaptive child isn’t bad. They’re an important part of you. But, like any child, they need to be parented. The next time you feel your adaptive child take over, try not to let them determine your actions. Try, instead, to listen to what they’re telling you. 

Let’s get back to Dan and Julia. Spoiler alert: they didn’t get divorced. But Dan had to learn how to parent his adaptive child for their relationship to get back on course. Here’s how he did it.

First, he identified his inner child’s adaptive strategies and pinpointed their root cause. Therapy can help during this stage, but it’s not a necessity.

Then, he practiced what’s called relational mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of regularly observing your sensations, thoughts, and feelings without judgment. Relational mindfulness extends that neutral observation to your relationship with others. For Dan, this looked like taking a deep breath whenever the impulse to lie or deflect blame arose. 

Next, he worked on rewiring his neural pathways with the help of the respect test. Whenever he had a negative thought, he tried to ask himself if it failed to meet the basic standards of respect. A thought like, I’ll just tell Julia the store was out of milk instead of admitting I forgot to buy it doesn’t demonstrate basic respect toward Julia. A thought like, It’s pathetic the way I’m always lying and making excuses doesn’t demonstrate basic respect to Dan himself.

Every time he slipped up, Dan reminded himself, It’s not you that’s bad, it’s your behavior. That’s true for your adaptive strategies too, by the way: you’re not a bad person, you’re just behaving badly. 

By practicing mindfulness and working on rewiring his neural pathways, Dan had a breakthrough. He came home late from work one evening, and instead of spinning a story about a last-minute assignment from his boss, he told the truth: he’d gone out for a drink with his coworker and forgot to call. 

Then something crucial happened. Dan was expecting to get in trouble – he hadn’t behaved perfectly. If his mom were still around, she would have been furious at him. But Julia is not Dan’s mom. She didn’t mind that he was late. In fact, she was thrilled he’d told the truth. Dan had what’s known as a corrective emotional experience. He’d always lied because he’d learned telling the truth led to a negative outcome. Julia’s positive reaction to his honesty helped him see how damaging and unhelpful his adaptive strategy had become. Although it served him well in childhood, in his warm, loving, adult relationship it just wasn’t needed.

What does an individualistic romantic relationship have in common with a seesaw? It's a constant shift from being higher or lower than the other person. When you’re operating in a you-and-me consciousness, there’s never balance and harmony.

And here’s the scary truth. It’s all too easy to move from a you-and-me consciousness to a you-versus-me consciousness. Remember how, in stressful situations, you might summon your adaptive child rather than your wise adult? Well, that’s not the only thing you bring along. Often, you end up fighting with your core negative image of your partner – basically, it’s the cartoon villain version of your partner you create in your mind, comprising all their worst, most annoying traits. Does this version of your partner actually exist? No – they’re a product of your imagination. But when your relationship with your partner is going badly, you might feel like you wake up next to their core negative image every morning and go to sleep next to them every night. Not exactly the stuff romantic dreams are made of.

And guess what? Your partner has a core negative image of you too. In fact, you probably have a good idea of what that negative image looks like. Let’s say you’re a little disorganized. And that’s really frustrating to your type-A partner. When you miss important appointments, your partner’s core negative image of you is triggered. You’re thoughtless and entitled and spoiled and – the list goes on. Now, you’re riled up: you conveniently ignore there’s some truth to that image and opt to be outraged instead. How dare your partner think so little of you?!

You’re getting the picture, right? The core negative image is completely unproductive. What’s worse, it can be magnified around a particular issue, making it almost impossible to resolve conflict. Let’s look at a pretty standard situation. Alex wants to have more sex with his wife, Tracey. Tracey feels like, when it comes to sex, Alex doesn’t listen to her needs and desires. This isn’t an unsolvable problem . . . until the core negative images come into it. Of course Tracey will never want sex, Alex thinks – she’s terminally frigid. Of course Alex will never turn me on, thinks Tracey – he’s completely insensitive. Once they’ve activated these images, Tracey and Alex are stuck.

The solution to this problem is actually pretty simple. Tracey and Alex need to let go of the ego and start thinking about the eco – as in the ecology of their relationship. When you operate with an us-consciousness, you understand that your romantic relationship is a space where you both live. Poisoning that ecology with toxic behavior hurts you just as much as it hurts your partner. Of course, in our individualistically oriented society, shifting into us-consciousness is easier said than done. So here are a few more concrete tips.

First, resist hanging on to your core negative image of your partner. It’s a hop, skip, and a jump from “He is so insensitive” to the sentence construction that sends chills down a relationship therapist’s spine: “He always . . .” or “She never . . . .” Framing your partner’s behavior as permanent and unchangeable means you’ve given up on resolving conflicts even before they arise.

Next, try something called redistribution. What hurts you most in your partner’s actions is often something you’re secretly ashamed of in your own behavior. Say you hate your partner’s hot temper but respond with passive aggression. Well, that’s just another form of rage. Owning up to shared flaws can help you move past them.

Finally, find the shared objective. You’d be surprised – even bitter arguments often center on a shared goal. For Tracey and Alex, that goal is a more fulfilling sex life. Once the goal is established, shift the conversation. Instead of “I want more sex,” ask, “How can we improve our intimacy?”

Remember, you can’t have power with someone, only over them. Abandoning power struggles and point-scoring is the best way to truly empower your relationship.

Sometimes, something in our relationship breaks so dramatically that it’s not just our partner, but our whole world, that seems changed. Some traumas are so shattering that they reconfigure our reality entirely. The psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman describes it like this: You’re standing in the kitchen when you lean against the wall, and you sink right through it. You’re not just wary of walls now. You’re wary of everything. If you can sink through a wall, what else can you sink through? It’s the same when a crucial point of trust is broken with your partner. If they could do this to me, you think, what else could they have done? 

But there’s a silver lining here. Once the reality of your relationship has shattered, you have a chance to reconstruct it. Every relationship will have a rock-bottom moment, whether it's brought about by a single event – like an affair – or a gradual wearing down. If you and your partner hit rock bottom as “you” and “me,” now you have a wonderful opportunity to rebuild as “us.”

Let’s take a look at one couple that have just hit rock bottom. Dina and Juan have been together for ten years. But Juan has just found out that Dina’s been having an affair for the past two years. He’s devastated. And angry. But, luckily, he’s open to working on things – and Dina is too.

The first tool their relationship counselor gives them is the feedback wheel, a four-part conversational structure developed by therapist Janet Hurley. Tell your partner: This is what happened. This is the story I’m telling myself about what happened. This is how I felt. And, most importantly, This would help me heal.

It’s not enough to explain to your partner why you’re hurting. You need to help them help you. In an individualistic mindset, you expect others to meet your needs. But when you think in terms of “us,” it becomes obvious that guiding your partner to better support you is something that helps them and you.

Back to Dina and Juan. The feedback wheel helps them move through their broken trust. But that’s not all.

Juan also realizes he’s brought some harmful internal narratives to their relationship. His father was hot-tempered and prone to violence. As a result, Juan’s adaptive strategy is to keep the peace – at all costs. Throughout his relationship with Dina, he’s been telling himself that keeping his thoughts to himself keeps his relationship safe. In truth, his reserve has been keeping him from speaking up about issues that really bother him – and it has been pushing Dina away. So he works on establishing a new narrative: My relationship with Dina is more fulfilling when I advocate for my needs. 

After the trauma of infidelity, Dina and Juan wanted to repair their broken trust. They ended up repairing so much more. Before infidelity, they were a “you” and a “me.” Now, they’re an “us.”