Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How Not To Torpedo Your Relationships | Dan Solo Episode

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Data-driven, dharma-informed, Dan-tested strategies for improving relationships of all kinds. In this episode we talk about:The value of having platonic friends in addition to your spouse or partnerA key communication skill that Dan picked up from the writer and researcher Brené BrownHow humor can help your relationships – and how it can hurtA cognitive reframe from couples therapist Esther PerelHow to manage conflict in a healthy wayAnd one of Dan’s favorite Saturday Night Live sketches: Man ParkSign up for Dan’s newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/how-not-to-torpedo-your-relationships-dan-solo-episodeAdditional Resources:Download the Happier app today: https://my.happierapp.com/link/downloadSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, everybody. I'm popping into your house. Hey, everybody. I'm popping into your feed today with a little mini episode. You may have noticed that I've been trying to get into the habit recently of doing short

episodes where I sum up everything that I've personally learned on any given subject. And today with Valentine's Day around the corner, I'm gonna talk about seven things I have learned about doing romantic relationships better. And these are things I have learned the hard way, most of the time, frankly. These are things I've learned either from having conversations right here on the show or from reading books, but mostly these are things I've learned by making

stupid mistakes in my own marriage. So let me start by thanking Dr. Bianca Harris, my wife, for putting up with me for now 17 years. Just to give you a little preview of what we're going to cover in this episode, we're going to talk about how humor can help until it hurts. We're going to talk about the value of having platonic friends in addition to your spouse or partner. We're going to talk about a key communication skill that I picked up from the great sociologist and researcher and writer, Brene Brown.

A cognitive reframe that I learned from Esther Perel, who's a legendary writer and couples counselor. And what may be the most crucial insight of all, a piece of advice or an insight that has really, really radically altered my life and especially my marriage. A few notes before we dive in here. As always, this is a menu, not a to-do list.

I'm gonna throw a bunch of stuff at you. You can take what you like and leave the rest. Most, if not all of these learnings apply not only to romantic relationships, but also to all relationships. So if you're single, you should be able to derive plenty of value from this episode as well. And given that I'm gonna throw a bunch of stuff at you, let me just make a quick plug for danharris.com.

If you're a paid subscriber, you will get in your inbox a cheat sheet that sums up all of the takeaways, the key learnings from this episode and also gives you a full transcript. All right, let's get to it. Here is learning number one. And this may sound super obvious, but it's foundational. And it is worth hearing over and over

because it is just so key. And everything is gonna flow from this during the course of this episode. And here it is, learning number one. Relationships take work. And there are learnable and doable and even enjoyable skills that will help you with that work. So it's kind of a bad news, good news situation.

The bad news is that relationships take work and the good news is there's stuff you can learn that will help you do this work. Let me just say a little bit about the bad news piece of this. My wife and I for many years have occasionally seen a great couples counselor by the name of Michael Vincent Miller.

And he wrote a book called, "' Terrorism, which I highly recommend. And in it, he talks about the history of marriage. Before the Industrial Revolution, marriage was a very different thing. It was, you often didn't get to choose who you were going to marry. It was imposed upon you by your family or the church or the larger community. And so it was a kind of a utilitarian affair. And then after the industrial revolution, it totally changed. We live in a much more individualistic culture. Most of the time you

get to choose who you're going to marry. And this is good in many ways and complicated. This freedom we now have can be dizzying. What has grown up in place of the stifling strictures of the church and the family and the community is what one writer has called the fairy tale industrial complex. We are sold this idea, and now I'm gonna go back to Michael Vincent Miller, who talks about this really in a very compelling way in his book, Intimate Terrorism. We're sold this idea that we're gonna go

from one enchanted evening to happily ever after. We're gonna go from that glance across the room at our new beloved to happily ever after where we're living in a fairy tale and everything's great and we've got rainbow barfing unicorns everywhere. But that's not how it works. That overlooks the fact that in the middle, there's a ton of work there.

And this overlooking of the work is reflected in the very language we use to describe this process. We talk about falling in love as if it's a matter simply of gravity instead of being, again, work. So that's the bad news that relationships take work. Let me say a little bit more about the good news. There are things you can learn that will really help you do this work more skillfully and successfully.

And that will improve the quality of your life. As Esther Perel, who I referenced earlier, and we'll talk about it in more depth in a few moments, as Esther Perel has said, the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life. And so learning these skills, you shouldn't think of it as homework. You should think of it as something that is going to make you much happier.

And often we don't get taught this stuff. In the very first session that my wife Bianca and I went to with the aforementioned Michael Vincent Miller, he pointed out that in our formal education, we get home economics, we get gym, physical education, we get math, but very rarely do we get relationships 101, which is crazy when you think about it. We are social animals. Most of us end up in romantic relationships at one point or another in our lives, and yet we are so rarely taught how to do this stuff.

And so we have to learn it usually from unreliable sources like the movies or our parents. And again, now I'm lapsing back into the bad news here, but again, the good news is that you can learn this stuff. Before I start talking about some of these skills, I do wanna quickly, while I'm on the subject of Michael Vincent Miller, put in a plug for couples counseling.

I think there's this unhelpful stigma around couples counseling, the idea that if you go into marital therapy or therapy for any kind of relationship you're in, that somehow your relationship is a basket case. I think given the divorce rate, which is really high, I think that is an unhelpful way to look at it. I think we should divorce rate, which is really high, I think that is an unhelpful way to look at it. I think we should reframe couples counseling

as just good hygiene, like a relational tuneup that we should be doing on the regular. You know, my wife and I will go sometimes if we've got an issue we want to work out, but sometimes, in fact, at the very beginning we went just because we were interested in doing this work, there was no acute issue and it has been so helpful to us. So just a plug for couples counseling.

All right, let me get to learning number two. Your partner cannot be everything to you. Let me go back to history again. We talked earlier about how after the Industrial Revolution, everything changed and we started to have this freedom to choose who we wanted to marry. And in this environment, we began to bring very high expectations to the altar.

The aforementioned Michael Vincent Miller writes about this in a really funny way. He talks about how we now expect our relationship partner, our spouse, or whoever we're living with, to be all things to us, including, and these are quotes, sexual athletes, perfect friends, and therapists. But that's totally unrealistic. Nobody can be everything to you.

And we need other sources of support, which is why there's this data that strongly suggests that if you have platonic relationships outside of your primary relationship, it will strengthen the primary relationship. Now if you're an introvert, you may be thinking, well, I don't want to have too many relationships and you don't need to have too many relationships. You just need to have some.

I'm an extrovert, so I like to have a lot. But if you're an introvert, you just need to have a few. My wife and I navigate this because she's an introvert. I'm an extrovert and I love to go out and she doesn't love as much as I do. She loves it sometimes, but doesn't want to be roped into it every night of the week, whereas I could really go out every night of the week. So I sometimes go out without her.

I have standing lunch and dinner dates with groups of friends. One lunch group has gone on for 15 years. And I get a lot of support out of these relationships with personal friends, with work colleagues. And I believe it has really helped in my primary relationship. And again, there's data here. So that's learning number two.

Your romantic partner can't be everything to you. So see if you can develop relationships outside of your romantic relationship. There's a great skit, I'll drop a link to this in the show notes, there's a great bit on SNL where wives and girlfriends are bringing their boyfriends and husbands to a dog run, but instead of it being a place for dogs to meet, it's a place for dudes to meet because so many guys are so, you know, once they get into a relationship, they let all of their other relationships atrophy and they have no ability to make friends.

And this skit on Saturday Night Live, it really sums up a big problem. And one that I think actually, while being hilarious, is instructive. Okay, learning number three. This is a phrase that I learned right here on this show from a really interesting woman named Alison Gopnik, who's a therapist and an author.

Before I give you the phrase, let me just give you some context. I think many of us assume, consciously or subconsciously, that we do things for other people, we take care of somebody else, because we love them. So the love is the precondition for doing stuff for other people. But Gopnik reframes all of that. She says that we have the causal link backwards. Her expression is we don't care because we love, we love because we care. Let me say that again.

We don't care, in other words, we don't take care of somebody because we love them. We love them because we take care of them. In other words, doing the work of taking care of somebody produces the love. This to me is totally fascinating and true in my experience, not just in romantic relationships, but in all of life. I'm thinking specifically about mentoring junior employees,

something that I was not always very good at and still can be a struggle for me. But I have found that when I make just that little investment in somebody, that all of a sudden I start to have feelings for them. And we're using the word love here and it's a complicated word. It's freighted, it's culturally loaded, it's confusing

because we use the same word to describe our feelings for our spouse, our child, and as I've sometimes joked, gluten-free snickerdoodles. Like, we don't use the word in a very specific way, but when I say the word love, I just mean our innate and evolutionarily wired capacity to give a shit and take care of other people. So just keeping this in mind in your romantic relationship

that if you do the work to take care of them, it can produce the love is really helpful. And I've seen this play out in my own marriage. I will admit this with some degree of sheepishness and maybe a little bit of shame, which often isn't helpful, but nonetheless it's there. Early on in our marriage, I made some pretty serious errors. Specifically, more than a decade ago, when we were having some fertility issues, we had

to do in vitro fertilization, IVF. And in this process, the partner is supposed to deliver shots to the person who is going through the IVF. If the is going through the IVF. If the person going through the IVF has a partner, obviously some people go through it on their own. I know plenty of people who've done that. But in this case, my wife had a partner, me, who was supposed to be delivering the shots, and I whiffed.

I am really squeamish, or at least I was then. I was raised by a pair of physicians, and they used to take me to their hospitals, to their workplaces when I was little, and I was then. I was raised by a pair of physicians and they used to take me to their hospitals, to their workplaces when I was little and I hated it. And it really engendered in me this deep squeamishness. And these were some big ass needles and I did not want to do the injections with my wife. I tried to, but I just couldn't handle it.

All the blood drained from my face and she was like, yo, don't worry about it, I'll do it. And honestly, she was pretty cool about it, but I felt like garbage. I just felt totally inadequate as a partner. For better or worse, in the intervening decade, the universe has handed me many other opportunities to take care of my wife because she has had

many health problems. She's fine, but she has had many health problems. She's fine, but she's had some health problems. And I have had to take care of her, you know, administering pills, clearing drains, holding her hand during painful procedures. And, you know, I've really had to step up and do the stuff that heretofore was like the stuff

that populated my nightmares. And I've found that getting over myself and doing what needs to be done has brought us closer together. It has made me love her more. And I want to be careful as I say this because it could make me look or sound really self-aggrandizing,

but I'm going to say it and hopefully it lands well. Getting over myself and doing what I consider to be, you know, just like the basic work of being a good spouse, you know, taking care of them when they're sick. So I'm not trying to say I've done anything heroic here. I haven't, but just the fact that I had this block and was able to, as I keep saying, get over myself and do this stuff, made me feel better about myself. Because I had been carrying around the story that I was, you know, like irretrievably selfish or incapable of love or maybe even kind of a monster or bad person.

And you know, very few people are thoroughly bad people. That's a lie that many of us tell ourselves that we're somehow, you know, bad people or, you know, terminally selfish. But we're all capable of love, and it's a skill that is there to be developed. And I've learned that. And so, again, I don't want to sound self-congratulatory. What I want to say is that this is a useful insight,

I think, for all of us, that if you put in the work, it will produce the feeling that you're looking for in your relationship. So one way to operationalize this insight, one way to actually put it to use in your life and in your relationship, whether it's your romantic relationship or any other relationship, is an expression that I picked up from the great meditation teacher and my close friend, Joseph Goldstein. Joseph often recommends to people

that if you have the impulse to give something, like it could be a gift, it could be a compliment, it could be a small gesture, we often feel the impulse like, eh, maybe I should do this thing. But then we develop second thoughts like, eh, maybe I shouldn't do that, it'll be a pain in my ass or maybe they won't like it.

Joseph's advice is to listen to that first instinct. Just do it. Try to disregard the second thoughts and follow through. And I share this now in the spirit of loving because you care, because if you start to listen to that instinct, to be generous in a day-to-day way on a mundane level, it could be a way to bring this to fruition in your own life because it's very easy in a relationship,

and I've seen this in my own relationship, when things are calm to kind of drift, to live your own lives, live parallel lives. And so listening to this instinct of when the generous thought arises to not override it is, as I said, a good way to bring to fruition this insight around loving because you care. Learning number four also comes from Joseph Goldstein. Before I tell you what it is, let me give you some context.

Here's one thing I know for sure about romantic relationships. There will be conflict and sometimes it will be unhealthy conflict. I've done interviews about this. There's a difference between it will be unhealthy conflict. I've done interviews about this There's a difference between healthy conflict and unhealthy conflict Most likely you will experience both in your relationships And so it can be really helpful to have skills to help you Stay in the healthy side of conflict instead of the unhealthy side of conflict and one way to pretty much guarantee unhealthy conflict is to believe that your opinions,

just because you have them, are unquestionably correct. And this can often happen when you're feeling self-righteous or angry that you really believe that your view of the situation is unquestionably the correct one. And so this brings me to the gem, the chestnut, the wisdom bomb from Joseph Goldstein.

Here's what it is. Certainty, he says, is not an indicator of truth. Let me say that again. Certainty is not an indicator of truth. Next time you find yourself in high dudgeon in a bout of self-righteousness, try to drop that phrase into your mind. Certainty is not an indicator of truth. Just because I'm certain I am right does not mean I am actually right.

While I'm on this subject, one little related hack that I think is a great way to kind of get at the same thing, but in a different way. So certainty is an indicator of truth. You can use that as a phrase you drop into your mind internally to keep your conflict healthy instead of unhealthy. Here is a phrase that you can use externally. In other words, you say it to somebody, your romantic partner or anybody, in order to keep the conflict on the rails instead of going off the rails. And this comes from Brene Brown, who many of you are aware of.

She's a writer and a researcher and really, really smart. And she has tried to develop the habit in her communications with other people of saying, here's the story I'm telling myself, before she rattles off a bunch of accusations. So in other words, instead of barreling into your next fight or conflict, shooting from the hip with a bunch of accusations, you can preface it with the phrase, here's the story I'm telling myself. And, you know, as far as I know, the goal of healthy communication

is to not activate the amygdala, the sort of reptile brain, the fear center of the brain of the person you're talking to. It's to activate the prefrontal cortex, the locus of reason and higher order thought. And if you use a phrase like, here's the story I'm telling myself, it doesn't sound so much like an accusation.

And then you can keep people in the prefrontal cortex instead of forcing them to take up residence in their amygdala. And in fact, actually, you can even, by giving people a window into your mind, into your paranoid stories that you're telling yourself, you can even invoke or provoke some compassion on their part because they might feel like they want to disabuse you of whatever story you're telling yourself. That's not true.

Now that I don't believe that about you, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so those are two little tools for healthy conflict. Certainty is not an indicator of truth and the story I'm telling myself. We're moving right along here. Here's learning number five. Like certainty is not an indicator of truth and the story I'm telling myself. We're moving right along here. Here's learning number five. Humor helps in relationships until it doesn't. So humor is a double-edged sword.

I've been cut by this sword many times. Let me start with the good news here, which is that there's data to show that it can be really helpful in a relationship, even in conflict. It can actually like lower the temperature and make you, you know, feel closer to one another. There's a great quote on this from a writer, H. Norman Wright, who says, a marriage without a sense of humor is like a car without shock absorbers.

So, yeah, humor can be really helpful. There's data to show that it brings couples closer together. However, it can be misused and weaponized and get you in a lot of trouble. Especially if you're using it sarcastically or to belittle your partner, that can fall into the category of contempt and make everything worse.

Another way to misuse humor, and this is really something, a mistake that I have made many times, is to use it to like deflect or dissociate. So sometimes my wife, I don't do it so much now, but in the past, we handed her the mic, she may have something different to say about this, but sometimes in the past and maybe still,

she'll be trying to bring up something serious with me and I'll make a joke about it because I'm uncomfortable and it doesn't go well. So use humor, but pick your shots carefully. Learning number six, this comes from Esther Perel, who, as I mentioned earlier, is a legendary couples counselor and author. She wrote a book called, Mating in Captivity,

which is one of the best book titles of all time. And she talks about the fact that sometimes in relationships, things are not problems to be solved, but instead dynamics to be managed. And I love this. Sometimes things are not problems to be solved, they're dynamics to be managed. What I think she's driving at here is that there are times

in your relationships, both romantic or otherwise, where there are chronic issues that are never really gonna go away. And that's okay. You can name them and therefore manage them. And humor actually can be very helpful here because you can have a little code word with each other that calls out in a playful way

the fact that you're back in this familiar rut. And another thing that can be really helpful here is a little bit of self-compassion because you are who you are. You're likely to, no matter how much work you do, you're likely to keep making mistakes. I've certainly found that to be the case. And so being okay with the fact

that you're gonna screw these things up I think is supremely helpful. I'm recalling a story about a conversation I was having with a friend a few years ago where I was complaining, not about my wife, but about a mistake that I kept making in our relationship. I can't even remember what the mistake was at this point, but I do remember what my friend said. My friend, who was also married, mentioned something that his couples counselor said to him about his own marriage,

which was, was it better this time than it was the last time? And again, I love this because it makes you realize, yeah, sometimes these are just relationship dynamics that are going to continue coming up. And because you are who you are, you have your wiring and your conditioning, you're prone towards certain mistakes. But if you can just make it so that the upward trajectory is going, you know, that you have an upward trajectory, that it's not as bad as it was last time, that's super helpful. And that brings me to the final learning, learning number seven, which is that self-compassion

can unlock something called the cheesy upward spiral that can have a massive impact on your romantic relationships and frankly, your whole life. So let me define some terms here. I've been talking about self-compassion without defining it for which I apologize. Self-compassion is a rich field of scientific psychological research,

but one simple way to understand it is the ability to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend. We all have this capacity to be good friends, to be good mentors, but we generally don't, for most of us, don't channel it toward ourselves. We beat the shit out of ourselves. As a friend of mine who likes to joke,

if somebody else talked to me the way I talk to myself, I would punch that other person in the face. But this is a skill you can learn to rewire your inner dialogue and to show compassion for yourself the way you would show compassion to other people. And this may sound like an individual pursuit, but it has profound ramifications for your romantic relationships. And as I keep saying, for really, for any relationship, there is data to show that people with a higher degree of self-compassion have more compassion for other people. So this is not something that matters just in your own life.

It can unlock what I call the cheesy upward spiral. This is a concept, he doesn't use this terminology, but it's a concept I stole from Joseph Goldstein, where as your inner weather gets better because you're cooler with yourself, your relationships improve. And because relationships are probably the most important variable in human flourishing,

that then redounds to your benefit and your inner weather gets even bombier and then your relationships improve even further and up you go. Now I'm not saying this is going to go forever. The opposite spiral is also always available. It's what my friend Evelyn Trubally calls the toilet vortex. You're kicking your own ass and therefore you're taking it out on other people.

And then you're, you feel worse about yourself and then your relationships deteriorate even further and down you go. I'm just making the case that if you can learn the skill of self-compassion, it makes you more prone toward the cheesy upward spiral. And that, in my experience, has profound, profound impacts on your whole life. Some quotes here on this subject, three quotes that I wanna share.

First is from Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Zen master. If you're not able to take care of yourself, how can you take care of somebody else? The second is from Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Zen master. If you're not able to take care of yourself, how can you take care of somebody else? The second is from Eleanor Brown. Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel. I love that. Spring Washam, a great meditation teacher says,

you can't pour from an empty cup. And finally, this one's from Maya Angelou who says, I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me I love you. There's an African saying which is, be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt. It's hilarious and profound. Okay, I'm pretty much done here.

In sum, I wanna say that while relationships do require work, this work can have profound effects. Back to Michael Vincent Miller, the great couples counselor, relationships can be this crucible. If you're watching this show or listening to this show, you're probably interested in self-improvement or doing life better. And relationships can be this incredible vessel

or crucible for personal growth. Whether you're in a romantic relationship or not, we're all in relationships with other human beings. And right there is this enormous set of opportunities for learning and growth. So that's my pitch. I do want to say as we approach Valentine's Day that we've got a lot more programming coming up on the show. Next week week we're going to talk to a relationships coach, somebody who actually knows what she's talking about with her nine lessons and learnings for doing your relationships better. And that's on Monday, the conversation with the relationships coach. And on Wednesday we have a kind of double date where my wife and I talk to our old friends, Coach and Paley Ellison and Robert Chodo Campbell, married Zen priests who are great friends of ours,

and we have this really raw, honest, and often hilarious conversation about our own marriages. So lots of programming coming up for you. In the meantime, thank you for listening or watching, and thank you to everybody who works so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, who produced this episode in particular. Our producers are Tara Anderson, who produced this

episode in particular. Shout out to Tara Anderson. Also Marissa Schneiderman and Eleanor Vasili and Caroline Keenan. Our senior producer is Marissa Schneiderman, who I just mentioned. I just want to make sure I get her title right. Our executive producer is DJ Kashmir. Also we get our production done by the great folks over at Pod People. And our theme is done by Nick Thorburn from the band Islands. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.