Significant Others - Bonus Episode: Dr. Susan Flinn on the Significant Others Within Ourselves

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

In our final bonus episode before the new season, Liza is joined by psychoanalyst and couples therapist Dr. Susan Flinn to explore the significant others within ourselves and how they impact our relationships. They also discuss this idea of our ideal self, our ideal mate, and how these can set us up for disappointment. Season 2 premieres on February 14th! Want to support the show? Rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and keep sending suggestions of Significant Others you’d like to hear about our way at [e-mail]!

Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and we've come to our final bonus episode before the start of Season 2, which is very exciting. Another thing that's very exciting is our guest today. Dr. Susan Flynn is someone I've known and to come and talk with me today in her capacity as a psychoanalyst and a couples therapist about the significant other that lives inside each of us. Dr. Flynn, thank you so much for doing this. I don't have a list of your accreditations in front of me, so could you start off by telling us how I should really be introducing you? I should really be introducing you? Yes, sure. Okay. So I have a PhD in clinical psychology from the City University of New York. And I'm in private practice as a psychoanalyst and a couple and family therapist. And I teach others, psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, how to work with couples and families. That's my specialty.

Got it. Were you at one point the head of psychiatry somewhere or no? I was one of the people who ran the family studies unit at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Bronx Psychiatric Center. So I was an adjunct faculty at Einstein for many years. I'm both a psychoanalyst. I have a psychoanalytic certificate from NYU postdoctoral program. And what's unusual about my training is that I'm both a psychoanalyst and a couple and family therapist, and that there are only very few of us, even in New York, the mecca of therapists. So I know this isn't on the menu necessarily of what we're discussing today, but why do you think it's so unusual? Well, because most people don't want to put in the, I put in 11 years of training as a psychoanalyst and not many people are willing to give that time and energy. It's an enormous

commitment to be a psychoanalyst. So it's not necessarily that there's something about the mode of working in those two directions is contradictory. When I was doing my training, people were still doing it a lot. It has gotten out of favor with the current CBTs and those like CBT, although people could be, if they're listening, take issue. But a lot of people don't learn about the unconscious. And psychoanalysis is really a deep dive into the unconscious. And that is why we're meeting here today. That's exactly right. That's the perfect segue. The perfect segue. It is. we're meeting here today. That's exactly right. That's the perfect segue.

The perfect segue. It is. We're segueing in. Yes. And so the reason why this is unusual is that most couples and family therapists haven't had that deep dive into the unconscious. So they, I may be hurting people's feelings. Some don't even believe, I hope so. Some don't even believe in the unconscious. Oh, interesting. But more today do. But, you know, when new therapies are evolving, everybody takes pretty strict positions on, you know, either side.

So there was a time, I think, when, like, people who were doing family and couple therapy without psychoanalytic training would poo-poo that are getting deep histories and were very much in the moment of what was happening and not so interested in the unconscious intra-psychic part of what each person brings to the party with their significant other. Well, so that actually is, that was one of the questions I had for you. And I'm just going to sort of backtrack a little bit and do kind of an introductory setup question, which is that I have this sort of conception that each individual human has kind of their own internal significant other that they are. Yay for that.

And so. Absolutely. That's to me one of the more fascinating relationships in, you know, human existence is the self to the self. And so that was question one was, is that a fair way to conceive of it? Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is said by many that that that we don't know about ourselves, we tend to act out in behavior that gets us into trouble. I see. With others. Right. So if we're not aware, let's say, that we feel helpless and powerless and we're totally not in touch with those aspects of ourselves, we do not get that we may be domineering and critical and grasping because we're trying to overcome those feelings of powerlessness.

And other people would say we're a pain in the neck. But it is and not get that underneath the toughness and brashness are these feelings of powerlessness, but that it can feel very good to be angry. A lot of people feel very good when they're angry. They're empowered. They're energized. And unfortunately, if that's what is going on in a couple. And they've picked one another. I very much believe, I'm not alone in this, but I very much believe, because it's played out every day in my practice, that people don't get, of course, that if somebody's coming at you in a very aggressive way, most people will come back in a very aggressive way or give up. But there is so much give and take with a couple, both having things that they're not aware of, that are, you know, the word disassociation, totally not aware of that aspect of yourself. So when you're seeing a couple, you're seeing four people, basically.

Oh, God, yes. At least. At least. Is it ever more than that? Oh, yeah, of course. Oh, really? Wow. Well, you know, there are, it's pretty rare, but not that rare. But there are people, you know, who have many disassociated parts of themselves, kind of silos inside of themselves that they're just not aware of. And that's what a good analytic therapy.

I mean, you don't have to be in total psychoanalysis, but a good analytic therapy where your unconscious dynamics are explored will help you understand. I mean, something that just popped into my mind was a couple I saw. Well, no, I actually didn't really see the couple. I saw the individual woman in analysis after they were seen actually by a colleague of mine, very seasoned colleague, said she couldn't get anywhere with them as a couple. The woman in the couple could not even say what her desires, she had no idea what her own desires were, just totally cut off by it. Just knew that she was very angry at her husband, felt that he was a total blob at home, didn't contribute. And she was just terribly unhappy.

And they couldn't really get a dialogue going. And sometimes you can work with that in a couple. In this case, there was no working with it, and I started to see this person in four-time-a-week analysis, and what emerged was just so fascinating that in her mind, she was truly married to her father. She had never stopped having him as the main man in her life. And her mother, unfortunately, had been a very, trying to think about how to put it.

Her mother was a very infantile person. And this was the second wife of this man. He had been married to the mother's, her mother's sister. Oh, wow. Died very young. And, you know, as some families did in old fashioned families, you'd marry the next sister in line to make a family. Right. And so she was not the love of his life. And unfortunately, my patient became the love of his life and was a very competent, bright little girl. And they were the couple. Totally unconsciously. And she didn't even know it. You don't know as a child that you've been picked to be your father's mate. And that's what kind of came out. I'm totally, no idea. So you're talking, just to clarify, there was no literal crossing of boundaries sexually or anything? No, no, no, none of that.

But a fantasy. And fantasies, we all have fantasies. I would not have known had I not been in analysis so much that I found my dad incredibly exciting and sexy when I was a little girl. I didn't want to know that. I found out in my analysis. Oh, gosh. Wow. And you paid want to know that. I found out in my analysis. Oh, gosh. Wow. And you paid money to have that experience.

I, yes, that's my house in the country. Oh, well. And so, yes, paying money for that insight also made me understand why I needed to marry an uncola, someone who I thought was so different from my dad. But as those things happen, you can be fooled. Right. Right. You think you're picking a not dad. And then all of a sudden, you know, 20, 30 years later, they start acting a lot like your dad. That's so funny. So that's the other part of the unconscious about finding people we can feel very familiar with. I underline the F-A-M under familiar, like family.

And so in my understanding, there's, which is very, very armchair layperson, not at all educated about this, but there are, so it's, it sounds also as if you're saying that there are sort of more reasonable, normal, quote unquote, versions of this kind of matching up. And then there are the ones that get, you know, go sideways for one reason or another. this image that you started with of a person who's so aggressive and domineering, but on the inside thinks they're just barely hanging on and fighting for survival, right? So how does that, first of all, okay, I was going to ask what purpose that serves, but I guess it's sort of obvious. Well, but I can flesh that out more. You know, there are many things that we all, you know, more human than otherwise carry around. And one is shame. Shame is a very toxic feeling, but everybody has it in one way or another. And I will underline that the avoidance of feeling the shame of feeling, let's say, small, inconsequential,

can be so powerful that some people never get it. And my experience has been with some people never get it. And my experience has been with some people who were just thinking of someone early, early, early on in my analytic career where it took nine years, four times a week on the couch, took us nine years before she could look into why she was so angry and bitter all the time. Wow. And everybody else was wrong. Everybody was wrong. And what was it? It was very hard for her to take responsibility for her part in anything. She felt so shamed.

She had, you know, like everybody's criticized. Some people are criticized more than others. Some people take criticism different than others. I mean, we are born each as very different biological organisms. We all have different temperaments and take in the world. That's why people say every child was raised in a different family because every child pulls different things from parents. Every child experiences different things with parents. The interaction is different with every child and parent. So it's very variable.

So with that patient that you were talking about and the anger in the nine years and then finally kind of understanding it, what was the transformation that she experienced? Well, she did start to be open to dating. She had and found somebody and got married. So that was a major thing because not every guy was wrong. She found the one. She found the one. That actually reminds me of something. This is a joke in terms about being criticized and everything.

And this is a joke in my household really told about me. If a husband is walking in the forest without his wife and he says something and no one hears it, is he still wrong? And he says something and no one hears it. Is he still wrong? And we can all answer that on our own. Yes. That's a good one. And I have kidded around with people about that people get married to have someone to blame. It's one of my favorite sayings of all time, and I've quoted you many, many times,

including on this podcast with that line. I appreciate it so much. Yeah. The way that you fleshed it out when I first heard you say it was you sort of characterized the person saying, it feels like it's your fault. It looks like it's your fault. I think it really makes all the sense in the world that it's your fault, which is just exactly the experience of being in a long-term couple. You know, it'd be so much more convenient for me if this was your fault. And then on the rare occasion, sometimes it is. And then it's like, wow, now what do I get to celebrate?

Like this is unprecedented. Yeah, it is hard to kind of come back and say, how have I contributed to this moment? How have I contributed to this moment? Which is a question I try to ask myself, even if it's not in my primary relationship. I mean, there's another great, great quote that someone told me, which is, she said, if I encounter three assholes between my house and the freeway, I know I'm the asshole. That is marvelous. I love that. I'm taking that on. Thank you. Yeah, it's a good one.

I will attribute it. Yeah, like most days there's one max. So the three a day, that's a sign that you're really in, you know many many decades of intensely difficult and important work into something um oversimplified it sounds as if if we were to be able to think about this in some kind of productive way, again, on the sort of layperson scale, that maybe a part of good mental hygiene is when we have those feelings of response, negative response to anyone, really, especially someone we're intimately connected with, but really anyone who we're trying to deal with at all. That the first, if we have that negative sensation, we need to kind of start with ourselves and check in a little bit. It can really help because the more we get stuck in blaming the other totally, it just narrows the conversation. It turns it into an attack instead of a what's going on here. It's a real difference between, you know, what is happening here? Right. Trying to open it. What part could I have played in it?

What part of my psychology is involved in seeing it this way? And can I try to widen my understanding of myself and maybe also the other person and get some sense of where they're coming from? Are they really only trying to be mean to me right no you know it may not be you know and especially you know we do see patterns much more easily in the other not right you know it's so easy to see things in the other person and much harder and i i mentioned one reason is shame not wanting to feel those feelings that we don't like about ourselves that aren't. I like to think of it as that we all have some version of an ideal self that we wish we were. That we aspire to. That's a whole other significant other. Absolutely. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, yes, Liza, right on it.

Yes, that is another significant other. Our ideal self, our ideal mate. How could our person that we chose be ideal? What human being can be ideal? And so we are really heading for disappointment. Also, I find that when I grab my associations, they're often interesting. They're interesting to me. I'm sure. So I have a colleague who told me about a poem about long marriages and disappointment.

And this, I think, is fascinating. And it was told me this many years ago. So you may have heard it. I look forward to hearing it again if I have. Okay. So the poem is originally written in Hebrew. I don't know who the poet was. And she was from Israel and translated it and read it to me in English.

And it was about the stone monuments, like in a cemetery, in all of our hearts, where we grieve for that ideal husband or wife that we didn't get. Wow. Wow. Wow. Oh, man. She's a couple therapists, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and how can it be how can one other person fulfill they can't know all our hopes and dreams and complete us and nobody can complete us or or we ask them to complete us unconsciously and then they go, what? Right. It's not my job. It's not my job. And how would I ever know what it would be? And how could you ask that of me? Do you feel that? Because I think sometimes it's sort of pop culture becomes an easy scapegoat for idealization and people think,

oh, it's romantic movies and blah, blah. But do you think it's just sort of as innately human as shame itself to be holding an ideal for ourselves, for our partner, for the world? I feel like maybe that's kind of what gets us up in the morning is still like holding out hope that things are going to be the way we want them to be. And then managing our disappointment when it's not is the work of the day. Well, that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot. I'm trying to think what piece of that to take on. I do think, like everybody, we all take in so much from the media and maybe more now than ever it's so available. And it's nice to imagine that it could be that there's this, most family dramas and stuff, there's this revelation and everybody is undone. So I think we do get this idea that change is easy.

It's so not easy and so hard. And I think that you're putting your finger on something there, that there is a widespread misconception that you can change that fast. Children can. Children, I mean, child therapy, if it works, it's amazing. Children can really make tremendous changes quickly, and especially if their parents are involved and, you know, the whole thing is supported.

And especially if their parents are involved and, you know, the whole thing is supported. But we as adults who've been practicing, let's say, all our ways of doing things that may not be working out takes a lot of effort, enormous, enormous effort, and sometimes years and years to make some significant changes. And there's also the piece about significant others that it can be very destabilizing for a couple if one person starts doing something that they hadn't done before. I mean, a typical story, you know, where the wife walks out, where she had been under his thumb. It's in the, is it the 1800s? You know who it is. The dollhouse. The dollhouse. Okay. So dollhouse marriages. Yes. Which still happens. and the doll can be a husband too sure yeah i mean it can go both ways um so when one partner let's say is really working on their own sense of self-worth and why they may have kind of um cut themselves off at the knees, so to speak,

and be beholden to another person and learn about all their traumas in their lives and why being dominated was so important and how they lived that out. And depending on how complicated it was and how traumatic it was, if that person, the doll, so to speak, starts getting empowered, the more dominant partner is like, what?

What just happened here? How come our old deal, our old contract? Because it is a contract. It's an unconscious contract. Using a contract may not be, I wish I had a better word for it, but agreement. It's an unconscious contract. Using a contract may not be, I wish I had a better word for it, but agreement, let's say, that couples make unconsciously.

And the other person says, well, that wasn't our agreement and is trying to pull them back in. And then things, if they're not fully worked out and the person who has been more comfortable in the dominant role cannot own their own dependency needs and how it helped them to feel strong to be the one in charge doesn't deal with those aspects and learn to live with their sense of powerlessness and humility and whatever else, he got a lot of trouble. And sometimes some marriages end.

Yeah, yeah. Change is really hard. Change is, yes, and sometimes impossible for some people for very complicated reasons. Will you talk a little bit about this idea that you mentioned to me, the particular school of thought, I can't remember what it's called, but I think you said it was introjects? Oh, yes. So introjects, in layman's way of speaking, I would say, are all the aspects of people who have been important to us, of ideas that have been important to us,

of things that are very foundational values. And introjects can be parts of ourselves we know very well and parts of ourselves we don't know very well, like the unconscious parts and the parts that are very hard for us to own. And as I said before, you know, shame is often a part of it or more. That's not me. I don't want to be, you know, I, I, you know, when you vow, I will never be like my mom or dad and never say that to my kids. I'll never feel that. Oh, well, and then it jumps out of the yeah yeah the box

and there it is so um i think that's what people are referring to uh you know i'm sure someone who is a scholar of this could take issue with me on but this is like it's like our internal world that guides us. And some of these things are stronger than others. And there's some of these things that we are, and this is what gets people in trouble. The parts that we're not aware of, the parts that are disowned. I'll never be jealous like my friend is. I'll never be enraged like that. Enrage is not good. It doesn't look good.

It's not a good thing. I'll never be this. Those parts that we don't like in others are often parts that we are struggling with or don't even know we're struggling with ourselves. So that is a big deal. Yeah. Well, it sounds as if there's generally a lot of energy that has to be deployed toward keeping those things hidden from yourself. Yes. Oh, enormously.

things hidden from yourself and that that yes oh enormously and that that then you're you know engaging with someone who's it's like when you're trying to you know run a program on your computer and it's stuck on something else it's draining it and it's not responsive in a satisfying way yeah and just to finish the thought about introjects in relationship is similarly to you're dealing with multiple people in the room, even though there's just two people in a couple. If you're dealing with everyone's introjected internal landscape, is it the kind of thing where that always has to be fully excavated for it to be a healthy relationship? Or are there things where it's okay that, you know, you're never going to shine light on all of it would probably like just keel over? Yeah, no, you're not. I mean, and there are things even, you know, that you could have worked on forever and still, still there. Yeah, still there. So, do you see... I mean, I just, you know,

of the moment, my perfectionism, which, you know, it's kind of, you know, it's... Seems to have served you fairly well. It has, and that's why it's hard to give it up. Yeah, sure. So, when I was going over my notes... Yes.

For our casual conversation. Yes. For our casual conversation, I'm thinking, really? Really? How many, you know, do you have to go on the couch again? It's like, when can you let it go? I know. You know, when is your mom and your sister's voice going to go out of your head and say, that's not good enough? Oh, man. And those things. And of course, you know, thank goodness it gets better with age. You know, as life experience says, okay, you're not a fuck up. Right. Right. But you're still, the voice is still in.

So the voice is still there, but I can kind of laugh at it a little bit and kind of cajole it more. Yeah. Kind of. But I still find myself sometimes if somebody close to me screws up on something going, and then have to take a deep breath. Take a deep breath. That is not good for them. Not good for you. Let's take a deep breath, take a deep breath. That is not good for them, not good for you. Let's take a deep breath.

How big is that in the scheme of, I mean, you know, you have to work on these things that you, that was kind of, my experience of it was pounded into me for years and years. Right. And. Well, and then especially if it does serve you well to any degree, it's very challenging to say, I'm going to let go of that. You put your finger totally on it.

Yeah. Because it also works. Yeah, right. Exactly. It also works. Yeah. And it's hard to give it up, you think. And I remember hearing this therapist say something that just

got me so like oh oh my god dare to be average okay have you have you ever oh my god i got so anxious oh that's sometimes are you crazy sometimes when i screw something up, I'll be leveled with the accusation around my house of being a B-plusser. Oh, right. Which I earn, sadly. A-plus or nothing. Do you find that the introjects in the similar way that what we started talking about with the sort of unconscious, I don't know if you would call them deficits, but pathologies or whatever, finding sort of like interlocking mechanisms when a couple being drawn together? Is it the same thing with introjects? Meaning, do they match up? It's really, it is, there is a lot of matching up.

And sometimes I've thought if I've been able to have a deep dive with a couple to excavate all that, it's amazing how they build. Oh, really? Oh, interesting. It's amazing. And it's hard to know whether they're pulling it out of one another or we're just more human than otherwise or what the thing is. But maybe if I think of kind of a case to show that. So this is a long time ago.

So there's this young couple, and they had been married a very short time, maybe a year and a half. And he was furious with her that she did not want to spend time on the weekend with his family, who he loved enormously. And he had this idea, this again was his idealized thing, that his wife and his mother were going to be best girlfriends and it was just going to be wonderful. And she was enraged that he wanted to drag her to his parents' house practically every weekend. Oy.

And she also absolutely detested his mother, who she found overbearing and intrusive. And the mother wanted to be friendly with her and was inviting her out, you know, for girls things to go shopping and go away for spa weekends and things like that. And I usually do what's called a family genogram, where I try to get the emotional connections between people. And it's a genealogy around feelings and what you feel your relationship is like with parents, grandparents, siblings. So I found out for him, he had felt that his mother, when he was growing up, that his mother was totally not interested in him at all, very infantile, and that the father was really took care of her a lot and he really uh felt that he wanted to write that and at some point his brother he was the eldest his brother who i think was the eldest. His brother, who I think was the youngest, acquired some horrible neurodegenerative disease. And the whole family rallied around it.

And this brother went from an active, athletic young boy to paralyzed in a hospital bed at home. The mother could not even walk in the room to look at her son sometimes she was so overwhelmed and so it fell to the father and the other two sons really to care for and they did wind up getting some aids but it was it was a horrible tragedy and he had wanted to find because he he thought his fantasy that he wasn't even aware of was if he had been a girl his mother might have paid more attention to him and he had this idea that he would find a woman who would be somebody who his mother could bond with and he also they had had some family therapy when the brother acquired this

horrible illness and he felt that he had worked out a lot of things with his mother so then he became devoted to his mother and helping her so this was like his mission and he could not bear to see how angry he really was at his mother for neglecting him in his he was totally alone this even before the brother got sick that he felt totally alone probably had learning disabilities that weren't noticed at all and he was very very um kind about his father for thought his father was this poor guy who you know had to assuage the mother all the time anyhow so that got him into this mission to save the mother from her grief through his wife so then we go over he's talking about how do these mesh yes she was the youngest and her mother had had many postpartums and was eventually

um diagnosed as bipolar and had vicious vicious attacks on all the children and her husband the husband in his youth and the husband was a holocaust survivor and was just as she described him a beaten man and he called his wife my personal So, yeah. Okay. So she's coming. Wow. Yeah. You gotta. Wow. Oh, my God. So she was totally, and she was in her own therapy too. Her own therapist had sent the couple to me because she felt she was not getting anywhere with this woman. she was not getting anywhere with this woman. So this woman could not at all see that she felt so bad for her mother and her mother's bipolar illness and the mother's sadness and the mother's sense of being a victim in this world. And the mother believed that the children could do never

enough for the mother because the mother would say every day i'm only here with your father because of you so you owe me god okay so then you get he wants her to make nice to his mother right meanwhile she's trying not to see that she wants to kill her own mother and is speaking on the phone with her own mother four or five times a day. Oh, right. Plus, she's her father's advocate. So here it's like they really found each other to work stuff out because she did not want to, you know, be like under his dominance he became like her mother criticizing her all the time that she wouldn't be besties with his mom so she was totally withdrawing from him she i think

wanted him to understand how subjugated she had been and to try to support her being free. And here he's telling her how to live her life on the weekend. So they were so Velcroed about their issues, but you see how their needs just. Yeah. Well, I, what I, what I love about what you said, though, is, you know, this can feel a little daunting if you're trying to sort of reckon with, okay, what does this mean for me as a person in the world? But this idea of people finding each other so they can work something out feels very hopeful. It is the most hopeful thing. And that's what I try to impart to people, that if they can put some brakes on, if we can work enough on the trauma, usually the level of viciousness tells me how much trauma there is. That makes sense. That they get locked in these places that are just totally alive in the moment and they don't even know it. It's like totally disassociated and they're playing it out. And it's my job to try to understand what they are playing out with one another. What are the unconscious forces that get them to replay these horrible fights. And they're often very similar, like,

you hurt my feelings, or you invalidated what I said, which happens a lot in couples. I mean, couples invalidate one another. Oh, you can't mean that. How could you possibly mean that? And then, you know, that hurts. No, I didn't mean that. I really did. And that's a nice comeback rather than how dare you? Where do you come off? You know, and then, well, you always get that push on. Hair off and running.

I mean, I think I could play every side of everything. You probably, I'm sure you could. I'd like to see the graphic novel you work on at night. I think that would be very entertaining. I don't want to take up your entire day, even though I could keep going and going and going. I know this is fun. It's fun, right? I told you it would be fun. You told me. I'm a believer. I'm glad it panned out.

But my final question that we ask everyone, and you can answer in whatever way you like, is if there is a person or a thing or an event that you consider to be the significant other, not necessarily in terms of a marriage, but someone who profoundly shaped your trajectory in a way that you recognize. Or, you know, again, person or event or. Well, I would want to honor my husband that way. We, the first 19 years were very hard. Well, if that's all, then, you know. The first 19 years, we were really trying to figure out what was going on. And I learned so much. And I really, I so, I'm so grateful that he had the sense of humor that he had because that helped so much. It just helped so much getting us through stuff

when I would be feeling so serious and so wronged and enraged. You're going to be wronged the way a type A person can be wronged. Yes. I'm going to do an A plus in wronged. Yes. I say I'd get an A plus for that, for being wronged. And he could say like the right thing. And kind of we both would be hysterical.

That's great. And just see how crazy we were being and stupid and petty. And so each one of us, oh, okay. You know, and so that, that so, I think, helped us enormously. I know that that felt, I'm sure I helped him in other ways since I was the psychologist leading us to couples therapy. We're going to couples therapy every other month. We're going back to couples therapy. We're going to couples therapy every other month. We're going back to couples therapy. But I imagine it helped you in your work also, right? Oh my God. I feel all the work that we did on our marriage helped me and also helped me be more optimistic when I could see people really

being in such a bad way with one another that I knew that it can be turned around if you find the lever in there and you can do it. And we were, you know, we were very fortunate that I was well connected and got us to some very good couples therapists who really helped enormously. Really. So I think I am optimistic in that way with a couple that I, and, um, you know, there's this thing sometimes you have to say to people that I'm going to hold the hope while you're hopeless because I can see if they if they do this and maybe they do that and if I can get them to kind of hear the other without jumping in and criticizing and kind of find out what gets them so irritated and you know and just I see these these little light coming through the stockade, you know, glint. Yeah, so I think it had my own working, working and knowing that a long marriage needs an enormous amount of work.

That's what I think I want to tell people, that you got to keep on working on it. You know, I think about the bit Chris Rock did in one of his stand-ups when he'd say, married, angry, single, lonely. Married, angry, single, lonely. These are our options. These are our options. So what are we going to do with them? Well, thank you so much. So this was a pleasure for me. Likewise a pleasure for me. A lot of fun.

And yeah, maybe we'll find a way of doing it again. I really could, you know, I could have a whole series where Dr. Flynn explains people to me. Thank you again to Dr. Flynn for joining us. And thank all of you for listening to these bonus episodes. Our next batch of Significant Other Stories will begin on February 14th. We can't wait to hear what you think of them and everything else we do. So keep the feedback and suggestions coming by emailing us at significantpod at gmail.com.