Name: Us
Rating: 4.7 (360 reviews)
Author: Terrence Real

What’s in it for me? Move past “you” and “me” to arrive at “we.”

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.

You can overcome toxic emotional habits.

If you’re in a relationship, this scenario might be familiar. It begins with something trivial – think a dish left unwashed in the sink. You ask your partner why they haven’t cleaned it; they reply, maybe a little snappily, that they haven’t gotten around to it yet. All of a sudden, you’re both feeling tense. Defensive. Things escalate. Now, much bigger emotions are coursing through you: rage, hatred, contempt. You’re both yelling, dredging up old disagreements and hurling insults. Or, you’re giving each other the silent treatment with stony eyes. You’ve forgotten that the person you’re fighting with is the same person who laughs at your jokes and holds you when you're sad. Your rational brain has left the building, and all your worst emotional habits have kicked in and taken over.

Why does this happen? The field of interpersonal neurobiology, which looks at the individual’s brain cognition in the context of her relationships with others, has some answers. The reason you and your partner are so good at driving each other crazy is that people in close relationships tend to coregulate. That means when your partner's levels of the stress hormone cortisol spike, your cortisol levels are apt to rise too. Similarly, when your partner is relaxed, you’re likely to feel relaxed too.

That’s part of the picture. But what about all those toxic emotional reactions that come into play when you and your partner disagree? That, too, has a lot to do with your relationships with others. You learned your stress reactions – whether they’re to yell, lie, or retreat into silence — in the context of your earliest relationships. For most of us, that means we absorbed the stress responses that were modeled by our families, and especially by our parents.

When things are going smoothly, most of us are wise adults. We think with our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for measured, complex cognition. We’re rational, flexible, warm, forgiving. We know that one dirty dish isn’t the end of the world. But when we’re under stress, another region of our brain, the amygdala, takes charge and stimulates a fight-or-flight response. In fight-or-flight situations, we’re only concerned with self-preservation – we feel we don’t have time to think things through, so we act on instinct. This is when the adaptive child emerges. Your adaptive child is a creature of emotional habit, using all the stress responses you learned when you were young. Whether this adaptive child is cruelly domineering, a people-pleasing doormat, or something in between, they are always rigid in their thought patterns and behaviors.

Sometimes, when you and your partner fight, your wise adult selves leave the room, leaving two adaptive children. All of a sudden, your worst habits and most destructive emotional impulses are triggered. But there is some good news. Just because your adaptive child automatically takes over doesn’t mean it always has to be like this. Scientists used to assume that the neural pathways of our brains were set in stone. These pathways calcified into habits, behaviors, and traits – in other words, our basic characteristics. If you were a person with a bad temper, that trait was yours for life. Now, scientists know that – through the process known as neuroplasticity – neural pathways can rewire and reform. In other words, we are capable of phenomenal change.

Let’s go back to that dirty dish. When the fight spun out of control, you and your partner weren’t acting as wise adults. Wise adults know preserving the relationship – the “us” – is more important than individual point-scoring. Instead, you were two “I”s battling it out.

Here’s what you need to know: when one “I” wins, the loser is always “us.” But it is possible to break free from toxic behaviors, to approach conflicts as wise adults, to stop thinking in terms of “I” – and reframe your relationship in terms of “us.”

Don’t fight your adaptive child – parent them.

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.

To move through conflict, ditch the core negative image.

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.

Don’t just recover from trauma – rebuild.

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.”

Key ideas in Us

About the Author

Terrence Real is a family therapist, speaker, author, and pioneer of the Relational Life Therapy methodology. His powerful, practical advice for couples seeking improved trust, intimacy, and communication has been featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Oprah as well as in the New York Times.