I'm thrilled I can't even tell you I really am truly thrilled to be speaking to both of you you are experts on love and on relationships and on how to communicate and communication is literally the glue I think that keeps relationships of all kinds together and I do believe that most relationships fall apart because there's a breakdown in communication and so there's a lot of talk out there on the internet in ethos about safety in a relationship and safe conversations is something that you speak about in your book what makes a conversation safe versus not safe I heard a man giving a lecture on love a romantic attraction first stage and the man was me right yeah uh the man said the romantic attraction everybody I figured it out on that stage one of uh a marriage relationship um the Bliss the uh the Bliss yeah the Bliss uh may you be forever happy you are now married Happy Ever After exactly the man had a chalkboard and he's put stage one romantic attraction stage two everyone ends up though who's in stage one and stage two which is the power struggle and um and he wrote power struggle but if you learn a few things in the power struggle uh everyone can get to Real Love Now Harville took the sentence stems of dialogue uh he began to create sentence stems and eventually um a book was written yeah uh I I I propose I said okay Harville you're you're doing great we are doing better all these people are listening to your lectures what would you like and he said Helen I want a book to be written I proposed marriage I said let's get married there's not a book publisher bigf in Dallas that's moved to New York I'll hire an agent a publisher and um a couple years later getting the love you want the book came out and and I got a call from the Oprah Studio who wanted Harville on the show he went on the show she submitted to the Emy committee and won Oprah her first Emy she had him onon 17 times so this is who I am married to how in the world did we wind up wind up married because we didn't go through we went through probably a 30 minute Romantic Period and then it went it went into the par and it went straight into in today's world people would say well you know not compatible or you know we don't like to do the same things or whatever it is or there's too much I mean there just would never be a third date it' be like on to the next but but who gets to be married to a man who lectures on love and wants to ride oh Absol oh absolutely but I think it speaks to an interesting generational and societal thing that you know people I don't know if you've noticed or if I but today people are so incredibly they treat other people like they're so disposable and they think well I can just get someone better or I can get someone who agrees with me or I can get someone who um appreciates me so and I think that there's almost like this revolving door in dating today because people always think that you know I could just get someone better yeah well and and I agree with that that there's a the disposability and I think the other thing is that as Helen and I tried to figure out how did we wind up getting because we had a conflictual courtship um and in fact the night before our wedding we had a big fight and you got out of the car and walked from the car oh I forgot about that to your to your house and slammed the door and U still I showed up the next day and we got married um there was there was some sort of bond we had even if it was negative it was an intense um connection but but there was so was there strong sexual attraction is that what it was chemistry no it wasn't sexual I mean we it was sexual but it wasn't sexual wasn't the basis that was sort of right no one else was teaching people there's something you can call dialogue that helps people it's a new way to talk most people monologue make good grades in school be precise be accurate if you make good grades in school you can get into good college make you can become a architect uh a doctor a medical you can't make mistakes you have to be sure that you're yes factual now this is called monologue your whole life one person in the world in the whole world other than Socrates in 330 BC was teaching people how to dialogue and and uh the Greeks didn't like Socrates disrupted they said stop teaching dialogue to the youth you're destru destructing them and if you read the story of Socrates he was arrested put in jail said now agree you'll stop teaching people dialogue and the night he said if not tomorrow will kill you well Socrates just drank poison killed himself yeah that's how that's how I feel about dialogue let's get dialogue into the world and harble feels the same way well and and I think another another attraction was that we and we were both divorced and in our on that those first dates we're talking about how come we were divorced I mean you were a wealthy woman you know top pick in Dallas and I was a university Professor so not too bad a pick um so how come I'm divorced uh with all my academic backgrounds and professional status and you and so we got into that and we um got curious why why did couples fight which is the question you're asking uh why is it not safe to be in a relationship and we began I think we probably began our journey even to this interview that long journey of over now about 50 years um in the first few conversations there was a common interest along with intellectual polarity hers intellectual stimulation in mind that we just had some massive energy going that kept us coming back after the fights so but in the process of um of Helen actually began what became for us the signature of our relationship and of our career the dialogue process began that spontaneously that night in her apartment with L one talk and the other listen and take turns because I picked that up at that night and decided that I was going to experiment with that with couples had a couples's practice and I started working with that took about 5 years to develop it from uh and with feedback from couples to develop it from a kind of an impulse and an intuition and that small thing about taking turns but in the process of learning all that to answer your question about oh how do how do you make relationship safe and about the value of convers of communication is I in listening to couples I moved to full couples practice away from Psychotherapy only to couples and I I noticed that uh couples would always come in with a problem and it was needed negotiation uh um problem solving uh relationship skills communication skills but what I noticed in listening to couples was not what they talked about but how they talked about it and I began to notice that the tone of the interaction between the couple was correlated exactly with how long it took them to be in therapy and so I began to focus on the tone about how to change them and and through that began to develop the dialogue process the tone was always judgmental that as they talked and shared about each other they were always in a negative space it could be gentle negative or harshly negative but it was a tone so I began to pay attention to that and using and developing the dialogue process asked them if they could speak in a different way and I would model it for them and Coach them in it and as I got them to back out of negativity and begin to say the same words have the same com the same problem like we've not been having sex or we don't know where to send our kids college or how who's who's going to clean up the kitchen or when are we going to go whatever the problem was if they talked about it differently I.E with kindness and curiosity about each other the problem uh became solvable and the relationship became connected but they couldn't solve the problem until they changed the tone so what what uh so what what what makes W the tone and with the development of the dialogue the new piece was it got really clear couples who come to therapy don't feel safe with each other so how do they get to safety and what we had discovered uh through trial and error for a long period of time in doing the doing research on I was doing research on my clinical practice was that I finally got it that when Helen would miror when Mar Mary would mirror Peter back if she mirrored him back in one tone of voice then he was Defensive if she mirrored him back in a soft ton of voice he was open so it was the mirror but it was both it had to be the mirror without negativity and then he would drop his defenses and then he would speak with um softness or warmth factually but no negativity and what began to happen is that couples began to report that they were now feeling safe enough to really uh become vulnerable and and to become to bring the issues underneath the problem out into the open so we came to the conclusion that safety is non-negotiable in a thriving relationship that's just the bottom line the question is how do you get there and one is you have to listen without judgment and talk without criticizing so our go goal in therapy is to help or coach or guide couples to do that to talk what they would about what they want to talk about do matter what it is but talk about it without being critical and when you're listening turn off the negative message that you're running while your partner is talking which is you know he's not making any sense that's not right and really listen so that when they did that the safety occurred defenses relax and now they can connect so that would be a kind of a long and Technical answer to the question that yes it is communication but it's not just exchange of information it's actually a exchange of affect that makes it me feel that you are not sending negative energy to me yes I mean that makes total sense and what it makes me think of is that it's really the state that the person is in right so how is there a process that you take a patient through where they're very agitated right and because they're so agitated maybe they're they're flooded with a lot of different hormones and adrenaline in order for them to speak or to listen without critic without judgment and to speak without criticism is there a process that you would take them through to get them from an agitated state to a more receptive State yeah a very a very specific one Jillian Harville will answer but I just want you to know uh we're not working with patients this is for everybody yeah just anybody yeah oh absolutely but if you if you were working with someone or let's just say to the listener who's listening right now what can they do yeah when they want to do all that but they're in such an agitated State like for me I would I would suggest maybe get a glass of water maybe stand up maybe take a moment anything so that you can calm down because for a lot of couples things escalate quickly right and so it's the deescalation is so important to create safety what are some things that people can do to actually calm themselves down so that they can deescalate okay we have two code words about voice tone that you can say when uh well for me har and it's true my voice tone sometimes is frustrating did and Harville goes VT and then sometimes Harv's look in his eye uh is very critical of me and I go LL for loving look yeah we just on the spot say it and then you suddenly remember okay I can relax I love that yeah so so that that's true we do that but and the thing I want to uh add to that is if you're really agitated how do how and they're in the session and we're doing therapy they're really agitated or if we're here is that all agitation is about a wish that's not been satisfied uh but what calms them the most is you have to move them out of the amydala into the prefrontal cortex and the calming calms the amydala um but to move them to the prefrontal cortex you have to ask them a question and the question is given how frustrated you are right now what do you want that you don't have that's frustrating you so they have to move from here to here to answer that question frustration into a request so they're now out out of the affect into the thinking and you sit with that until they get clear well what do I want yeah when you come in and you say the things you just said to Mary or or George what is it you want that you don't have that you're trying to get with that criticism and so first of all they get it they're trying to get something by being critical they didn't didn't quite realize that because it's interesting the brain has this sense that if I can hurt you bad enough you'll give me what I want so on hurting you even into violence and but behind all that is a desire so what is the desire so then we coach them to turn it into something abstract well I would like more kindness or more sensitivity or more vulnerability well so what would that look like if you turn that into a behavior something concrete that I could film with my camera and show it to a stranger and they would say yes that's friendliness so you have to make it that specific so now I'm keeping them up here to think it from uh an emotion to a thought to an abstraction to a concept to a behavior so now we've got them there they put this Behavior then so what I would really like is when you come home from work you open the door and come in and yell hey Mary where are you I my my beautiful wonderful person or whatever it is you want him to do so he can now do that behavior whatever it is and usually I've never found couples who can't do the behavior if you ask them to be more kind they don't know what that means they know what kindness means to them but not what kindness means to you so they'll give I'll give you my kindness but you won't feel the kindness because you need Behavior so you get that behavior that behavior now satisfies the wish so now we've got we've moved now out of that negative energy into positive behavioral exchanges now they're moving toward the satisfaction of seeing each other hearing each other and valuing each other and that's where you ultimately have to go you have to walk out of that office or finish your therapy only when you are confident that you feel seen heard and valued and that you are seeing hearing and valuing your partner it has to be and it's specific things like what I love um are like especially if both of Harville and me are tired Harville I am tired um and I just need to pick me up that'll I'll feel better uh what helps me are flowers from the drugstore if he would just at the drugstore being here Helen I got you some flowers maybe this to make you feel better and what Harville likes is um an espresso and like uh brownie or da da da and when I bring that home he he feel seen loved and nourished in the way he wants to be nourished it may seem silly but those little things you know that's in the literature actually it's always the little things the little things that really matter but you have to become intentional about them you have not just Cas the other person but it is so those are those are some of the things that build and sustain safety which is I'm feeling seen heard and Valu so I don't have to complain yeah I mean it all makes total sense I think it gets tricky obviously when a couple has a lot of builtup uh resentment yeah and they have difficulty bring there's such a stacking of negative experiences that they've had with one another and then and then they're trying to communicate and I find that people when they're in that place it's really difficult for them to listen because they're so defensive their walls are up you know their heart is closed and it's just uh I find it very difficult to then for people then to find connection there but what I hear you saying is that just by changing the tone changing the tone just by just by listening and validating and making those changes it can really lay down the groundwork for much more productive conversation that leads to Healing when you listen to and you get it you've been heard accurately and and with um without judgment changes your brain most people don't know the 2.4 2.4 pound organ two two lbs in everyone's skull is considered the most complicated organ in the universe uh and brain scientists have talked about the lower brain um uh which uh controls vital functions um when you um when you get tired in the afternoon and in the evening well suddenly uh you have dinner but you go to you feel sleepy and your body tells you go to sleep and sleep 8 hours and then your body uh tells you after 8 hours time to to wake up the Sun is up so you can get up so and but you've had enough sleep to feel better the next day and so we love this lower brain um but uh this is the part of the brain that monologues and if the lower brain um is um is uh if if a person is is monologuing and they get frustrated uh depressed or suicide um it releases cortisol and adrenaline toxic neurochemicals that people get sick more and they don't live so long and they don't feel feel good uh at all but if you use the dialogue sentence stems you choose to mirror what the other person has said and between left brain hemisphere right brain hemisphere is the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex where you move Beyond predication according to Dan's Dan seagull the brain Scientist by move Beyond predication but it means you wonder you wonder about the other person and um and the sentence stem in the dialogue process I miror Harel back and then I say is there more about that well Harville relaxes once I say is there more about that but Helen relaxes and it's dopamine aceta Coline nor nephrine serotonin relaxing neurochemicals you live longer you're healthier and you have better relationships so use dialogue whether you're want your current partner to be there you use dialogue because you're a healthy person and when you do it with a a someone else they feel seen heard and value and you get a better braing it's a healthier braing wow that's fascinating and all completely makes sense um I think that what you're describing it's it's basically the nervous system right it's what goes it's what goes on in the nervous system when you are flooded with adrenaline and cortisol yeah versus the feel-good hormones with safe conversation and with making a conversation safer it's an amazing co-regulation skill right exactly and it just takes one person I would imagine one person to completely change the way that they are because a lot of people they come into they're like well why should I be like that if they're not being like that right there's that competition exactly but if one person can say I'm going to I'm going to be the one I'm going to change right now I'm going to be the one that changed I'm going to change my tone I'm going to change it actually has a tremendous impact on the other person it like disarms them and then with just the the courage and the maturity and The Bravery of one person making a change and the awareness then what you can create is from going from conflict to co-regulation yeah exactly yeah and in the therapy sessions we uh I'm I was a very rigid therapist and that I did not want couples to hurt each other in my office most couples have their conflicts at home over the dinner table or in the bedroom so those two places are imprinted with negative energy so I did not want my office to ever become imprinted with negative energy so I wouldn't let couples fight in my I don't want to fight I I yeah I agree I can tell you what you're going to fight about and how you going to fight after being around you for about 5 minutes so yeah you can't do that in my office I don't want the energy in my space either yeah I regulate them by saying now want you to mirror back Mary what Mary has just I want you to say one sentence you to mirror it back and hold them in that send and receive because now I'm getting them both up here as they do that in the prefrontal cortex yeah they both are regulated and it's go what you call co-regulation but I'm the one uh doing that until they can do it themselves then when they can do it themselves we're done with therapy uh because now if they run into a problem they know how to dialogue and when they dialogue they'll co-regulate each other and then they go and solve whatever problem or whatever triggered their their their difference and they'll go because they've now learned to go to collaboration instead of competition collaboration you have creativity is triggered this is one of the things that we really push on couples just be curious be creative and accepting create be curious get data and accept it because your partner is not you so never expect your partner to be you or like you or want what you want or see things the way you see them they can't and you can't see it the way they do it the universe didn't make you with brains that could see the same world so isn't it amazing that if you share you get two worlds but you keep fighting just to have your world and get rid of your partner's world you know that pathology but health is co-regulation co collaboration cooperation co-creation so they become Partners in the process but they don't have the skills to do it so and I see therapy for me became helping couples have the skill to talk without polarizing and when they could do that when they could talk and collaborate they then began to become healthier people because they could take that to their children they could take it to work they could take it everywhere because they now had a life skill that was operative in their relationship and it's amazing how many people's quote childhood wounds receded way into the background or seldom ever triggered once they had this this dialogical skill nature nature is dietic hot cold dark light sweet sour wet dry different difference uh so don't expect your partner is the same as you you're going to be attracted to someone who's different and they're going to be attracted to someone different from them and the point is to learn to respect difference because that's all absolutely the universe or or or the uh harval doesn't have to vote the way I'm voting but I'm going to wa vot the way I vote and he will vote for whoever and that's his choice yes and I think this is what the world needs more than ever there's one thing before we wrap up that you said Harville that I think is very important which is that with these dialogue skills that it's amazing how one's childhood wounds can just recede to the background and I think this is so important because I I I what I've noticed to be a huge misconception is that people think I have to to heal all my childhood wounds to be in a healthy relationship and no you learn certain skills of respect of speaking of co-regulation and those Old Wounds don't actually have the steering wheel as much and so it's it's the reverse exactly the in fact I think that the the um that that idea came from the therapy profession we will heal you have to heal each other's childhood wounds you can't heal the wounds I.E if you mean they go away but they can you can stop recharging them with energy they go away yes and when you're getting the need met that wasn't met in childhood that produced that wound you're getting that need net in your adult relationship then that wound is not activated and after a while you realize living that way is really wonderful so you live that way after a while it becomes automatic U for a long for a while it has to be uh tactical and planned and intentional till your brain changes then your brain begins to realize hey I'm safer when I do it this way than when I did it the old and when I so the brain is it didn't care about anything except surviving but so if it survives by connecting that's it but if it survives by polarization that's it and but that's all most brains know is polarization and and that and yes they that's what the human civilization has not given us the second skill which is listening so that this verticality becomes lateral and this has never happened in the history of the world until the last we didn't even have the concept of dialogue until about 100 years ago and and we didn't have an operational concept of dialogue word but it wasn't operationalized until Harville did until about 40 years ago when we operationalized it so that now you don't when you say dialogue this is what dialogue looks like when you do it it rather than when you think about it there's an energy field between two people who was the person who said there's an energy field between two Martin Boer he's a Jewish M Martin Boer and we both have read Martin Boer we met each other and he um booer said there's an energy feel between two other between each other now the book Martin wrote is called I th you buy the book okay ien th I hyphen th you buy the book and it says most people treat each other like an it uh Harville you're supposed to wash the dishes and why do you do that that's really frustrating I me look what I'm doing for you I can't you even wash the dishes you know that's treating harble like an IT and um but treating him like a b is harble um tonight I'm going to the um uh hair appointment it's right by Meritt coffee shop tonight I will bring you you're going allow me aou a cappuccino and a brownie we'll have a wonderful evening tonight and he says those are the only two kinds of relationships there are those that are utilitarian and those that are intrinsically valuable or I want to do something for you what can I do for you this is uh wonderful thank you so much for coming on and just sharing your very valuable wisdom I think that you know the one thing that people really want to learn is to learn how to communicate better and there's and you two um have offered so much to world and it's we need it now more than ever because we are so incredibly polarized so um where can people find you uh books or of course everything is going to be very clearly uh written out in the show notes but please where can people find you and read your books well the fastest way is harval andh helen.com gives people our website on which is our schedule and the of course the fastest way to get books is go to Amazon and type in the name of the book gets cheaper there and they and they they we we don't sell books anymore because Amazon is a is a better marketer uh the new book just come out how to talk to anyone about anything there was a for couples getting the love you want yeah now there's a book for everybody and that Epic book and that website is quantum connections Quantum connection okay well we will link all of that out in the show notes and these are absolute must reads for absolutely everyone because everyone is in some sort of relationship so this is crucial people need to run not walk and Buy and read and those books right away so thank you yes thank you so much for your contribution we're meant to be relational we're born in relationship we're wounded in relationship and we can only be healed in relationship in relationship well only be healed in relationship might need to be your third book oh uh because I think that's a very important topic see you down the path thank you so much see you down the path thank you both bye bye