The Gottman’s Shared House Relationship Model

In this episode our intrepid Rebels were challenged to work in teams and build a model of how to make a relationship work.

After this, we looked at the Gottman's Shared House relationship model. 

Transcript

Welcome to honest talk about heartbreak, dating and relationships, relationships, the podcast helping you navigate your path to happy ever after with your host, Rob McPhillips. Tonight, we're here for the the government shutdown relationship House model that we're going to discuss. So you've just been in the breakout room talking about what you think your past relationships may have needed or what they were missing and what would have made them work if they were meant to work. Does anyone does anyone have any insights or thoughts to share based on.

That discussion. I have a nice term that came up in my group not needing to have a fair partnership, a sense of a fair partnership, but I like that term needing to have or not need.

Yeah, that's that's that's that's a shortfall in a relationship, not having one. But that's what they would love to have. So that's a shortcoming. Not having one. OK, that's a good one. Anyone else stand standing up for a balanced relationship at the same time, standing up, great defending. Now, I'm struggling to remember if Rosa or Rosa.

Yes, so we agreed with the girls that it was communication and trust and we talked about how. Sometimes taking a bit longer to get to know the person is a bit more worth it so that you get that kind of connection with them and then you get more communication and more trust and more openness to me personally. What that was, what locked in all of my past relationships was the communication and trust. And like I mentioned last week, there was this lack of vulnerability from the other side, like I couldn't trust the person because they weren't vulnerable with me.

So it was just a one way street, really.

OK, OK. Any any other qualities, so attributes of authenticity, honesty. Being present and also we have communication. OK, I come validation. OK, compatability. We cannot feel sorry. Another one is not knowing what we need, what we want.

OK, self-awareness. Yeah. Within Rispoli, respectful boundaries, boundaries. Are not getting not not getting physical too soon. So, like, say, if you had a date in plan where you didn't have physical contact to say like eight dates or whatever, you might decide that allows you to see the person as they really are and not get caught up in all the chemistry, which is wonderful. But if you're OK, it's almost like a drug. You know, you can get hooked and she's free and not really see what you've got.

Do you think that is just going to build up the chemistry and delay it? Or do you think that's going to be a way around that? I think if you give yourself time to see where what the person is actually about and they're a decent human being, there's nothing wrong with me and a decent human being and that being chemistry. But if there's just chemistry, there's no compatibility that is doomed. I think that's my personal experience and opinion. There's gotta be something more.

It's okay to have the physical and the the connection and the compatibility. Ideally, you're not going to marry someone you don't find you don't find attractive.

Are you OK? And we had in our group the trying to avoid the conflict. Avoid conflict. By pleasing or just simply avoiding? OK. I made suggestions there, got Carol. Sorry about that. Yeah, I just made the suggestion that it seems like you can only really meet and connect with somebody to the level that they've done that with themselves. So how well they know themselves, how developed they are is the depth that you can merge with them.

Mm hmm. I think it comes down to that. I think I can't remember who it was that you talked about being vulnerability, the vulnerability. And that's quite interesting, because when you do find someone who is willing to go further, more vulnerable than you. Is that going to feel threatening because there's a point where all of us have where we feel comfortable and a lot of people say that they want a lot of communication and vulnerability, but it becomes then threatening when someone does go to that level, because then you find the limits of your own readiness to go to the thing.

And I think you're really spot on that role. But I think that's why it's important not to share vulnerability, see too soon. So you say if you went on a date for the second time with somebody and they started opening up about their life, you would think that was a red flag straight away. But if they said the same thing on the 10th day, it would be appropriate. May be just about the pace of the getting to know someone not doing it too quickly, just slowing everything down.

Yeah, it's it's it's not what you do. It's the context in which you do it. The context is all important.

And you have to be careful about cultural norms, though. If you're an American, you will open up immediately. You will start to get that's true. Culturally, they're more open. So you may find that a little bit overwhelming.

But, you know, a pretty open it's wonderful, isn't it, that that sort of emotional openness. I lived in America for five years and that is really beautiful in other cultures like Colombia, and they're very gregarious and that's beautiful. But what I'm trying to say is if you start sort of telling someone all your emotional history that whatever culture you're in, that is kind of like, hang on a minute, that's a bit too much in there.

No, that's the kind of if you are talking to somebody who is of the same culture, it may be normal for both of them. You may think it's not the done thing, but that's normal for them. But I think it's more if it's two people from two different cultures, how do you make that happy meeting that happy half halfway point where you can both work with the differences between you? I think can I present a different view, please?

I believe if he's not the right person for you or you are not the right person for him or her.

Sorry, then. We are not willing to go that far to be vulnerable and open and transparent. Good poing, good polling, poorly in polling. I think that's the difficulty I've had in past relationships, actually, and not trying to communicate people all the time and trying to conflate resolve and not being met halfway. I guess they're not willing to be vulnerable or face their issues or be honest with themselves and with me. Yeah, and I guess it just depends how resolved they are within themselves, really.

I think I think everyone everyone has a level that they're willing to open up to and can connect to. And one of the problems that people have when they are dating or in a relationship, and then there's all these kind of tricks and techniques and the rules and all of these things. And what they do is they essentially mask who you are. So the goal isn't to make a relationship last with someone. The goal is to get the relationship that you want.

And so the more quicker you can get to who someone is, the quicker you can work out that in Winstone relationship, you shouldn't be. I need to make this work. It should be. Can it work with this person? Yeah.

Mean spot on. You just hit the nail on the head. And so the quicker that you can get to that and then the less emotional thing there is if it doesn't, if they're not the right person. So yeah, it's really just about finding the level that you can connect someone with. That they allow you to and you are comfortable with them. Sometimes it's just simply the person got so much trauma, why it's not even aware it's having these issues, so it's not really not honest with itself, it just simply never reached that crucial level.

It's just been always busy, busy, and that's our these time issues, we try to be busy and we try to solve a lot of problems that should be first ourselves, but we should be every single day for ourselves, like so many great people does. First two, three hours. It should be yours, not even your partner, not even anybody else. It should be your wake up early, do your three hours for yourselves. Then after go and do the other stuff.

Yeah, it's easy to lose yourself in a relationship, and so many people do lose themselves in trying to be the person to please or the person that keeps the relationship going. OK, so we've we've got quite we've got quite a few ideas so that everyone still confident they have a good grasp of their feeling and understanding. So when I saw when I first read it, I used to just write stuff for us to talk a lot. And so if he came here expecting to listen, to talk, then that's not what we want.

We're going to do. This is about being engaged and everyone sharing their views that we will come away with something better than any one of us had to start with. Now, what I want to do now is, is an exercise and we're going to work in teams of about four or five in breakout rooms. And what I'd like you to do is think up if you had to. And I need to, because you've been assigned the task of making a model, the best model you can come up with in 20 minutes as a group for how to make your relationship work.

AK. Does that make sense? We say that again, please. Sorry. So we're going to work in groups in four or five in the breakout room and the idea is to take what is essential for building a relationship model. So I don't know if you can see the whole thing. I've put it up as a virtual background of this is the Gutman's relationship model. So what I'd like you to do before we go through it and talk about it, I'd like you to think about what in your view as a group, would it take to make a relationship work?

So the government have been working on this like 40 years, but you've got 20 minutes. But just to come up with the best idea you have. And then so then we can we can compare that against the governments. OK, so we've got someone who wanted to do a kind of regulars know how things work in each group. If someone can take notes to be the spokesman and write down the model and draw in whatever, whatever kind of model seems to make sense.

OK. Is that volunteering better? Yes. If it starts with self-knowledge, self awareness, knowing the self and one word values. So who you are and what you want in life next, honestly communicate honestly with your partner or prospective partner. This is driven by vulnerability, which in turn brings about trust and authenticity is at the center of it. So we had millions of words like tolerance and patience and empathy and understanding, and we spoke about willingness to invest in a relationship and having an emotional bank account and how we need to be willing to create a balance.

But at the heart of it all really was honesty, starting with honesty to self Monkeybone. What you want and an honest. It's OK, yeah, that's those kids. Thank you. Does anyone else from that group who wants to do anything else in. Before we move on. OK, which group thinks that? So tonight we haven't got Irial here, so it's not going to be no bribery with apple crumble. So which group, just on the merits of the work that they've done, thinks that they have a better model or.

Or is that sent out? Or who has an alternative model, is that Janosz? Yeah, we actually find a couple of good points. One of them was the courage. To be bold and to do the things like. Also, the self reflect, we said, which is related more further to understanding the healing from the traumas, how to even do that, to be aware about. Dialogue to resolve the problems. Rather than just its proper listin and really understanding and the space to giving for each other, especially when the trauma will trigger.

And we also said, so don't try to help others without being asked to help, because by that you actually not giving trust, you actually taking out the ability to learn how to solve that problem in the future. And by like that, it's the person can feel it in control, and they're also the ones who are aware of the common trauma triangle of. Victim, victim, Villone, and remember the other one, but yeah, becomes, you know, that kind of trauma of Survivor and saved.

Could I ask what was the coverage needed for? So even to try to solve the problems, you know, for anything because solved, then we know what to do. But you actually have to put your ass there to do it. You have to be show up. And for that, you need a lot of courage. It's not just self confidence. That's not enough. You have to go there and do it. You have to go there and you have to be there and just the least.

And that's a courage. It's Bradley Brown, really nice talking about that in Netflix, you can find it's really nice. Because to me, the word courage says that you're willing to make the effort and to be willing to make the effort to me speaks of having that value, because I think that was somebody who you don't value, not willing to put in that effort.

You need courage to trust Jesus and to give yourself completely. OK, is anyone else from Genesis greet anyone else kind of thing to say? OK, which says it is two more groups within the. He would like to talk from one of the others. I'm doing my good Irene and Matthews Group. OK, OK, OK.

We came up with the idea of building a committed team, so it's two individuals working together to build a committed team which has a sense of fun and enjoys physical and emotional intimacy. Yeah, I can't even read my own handwriting. Sorry.

And contributing to that, uh, the following things, um, authenticity which was mentioned before.

Commitment. Conflict resolution and learning. Effective, these two separate things, conflict resolution and learning and yeah, and learning as in how to learn in conflict, learning, learning from the experience, from the conflict and the resolution thereof.

Right. Effective communication, of course, that is all tied into that, but separate and apart from that as well, learning to ask for what you want. Being able to ask you, which I think also ties in with courage. Can create encouraging and appreciating individual growth. OK, and, of course, values always fit into that. And providing dynamic support. Dynamic, yeah, it way the changes it also one supports and the other supports. Yeah, yeah.

And it may vary throughout, OK.

You for the biggest list, we like to talk. OK, one more group whose was the last group? Nicole. And so, yeah, we had our analysis just about managed to get something together, but we're talking first, we reckon it should be based on clear boundaries. About what both parties want, what you look for, what your morals and values are. Equals basically going from a place of equality with a partner, authenticity, which is really important and and with that we discuss that pertaining to autonomy as well.

So having your own things going on, your own interests, a little bit of introspection, I guess, and honesty. I mean, that's a given. And then we were feeling after this sort of communication and conflict resolution, so it with a bit of emotional intelligence, it's got to be based on respect. And you to be able to communicate and resolve your issues. I've got to be vulnerable with each other. And then we're feeling like shared humor is also important and teamwork, like Sandra was just talking about anyone else from the group mission.

And it's only two more to be Sandra's group type patient, loving, caring. OK. OK, so. I think now if we go quick and give you three minutes, same groups to come up with three. So amalgamates amalgamate, which is more important, Kifri, when I did this, I made like this model based on my ideas and then I figured out what is that the core of the all? Because it's easy to remember free. And it's interesting that only one of them is turned up.

Okay, so back in the same breakout rooms click fire free. And you see, you just need to really quickly agree amongst yourself, like I think or you assign authenticity and autonomy can probably be merged. And then we'll come back in three minutes for just free. Free for each. So quickly, what are the three from each group? Compatibility, authenticity, interdependence. We found this difficult to narrow down, we went with communication, conflict resolution, respect, and then we went to show on the last one was sort of bounced around empathy and love.

But I think authenticity is quite important as well.

OK. It's really hard to do in the short time and the other two groups. One of them was the authenticity aswell. We said all the communication to the solving problems. And the third one was a little bit like how we could describe. I believe I can explain. So you can explain. OK, I'll add something, Sidrah Mutual Attraction's. I guess you can say compatability, so which includes physical attractions, mental attraction, emotional attraction, spiritual attraction.

A case different, like all three levels of attraction. Yeah, or more. Okay. Physical, mental, intellectual and same as mental, but emotional and spiritual. OK. And Kate and Betty. British group Honesty Values and Curtaining Katamon.

AK. OK, so that's interesting. So authenticity is showing up. It's strange how in a group how much variety there is, and I think one of that one of the reasons for that is that words are very difficult. Words that I say would mean something slightly different to you. And so is really getting to the definitions of that. OK, so now I'm going to run through the government's model. So that the government said John Gottman started work research on relationships about 40 years ago, saying that he he had no idea how to have a relationship.

He had no idea about them. And really, he is someone very small, numbers driven, statistics driven. So he himan Bob Levinson just did this research and I didn't intervene. They didn't do anything. They just like the main research is in what they call a love lab. So they have like this flat where a couple will come in as if it's like an Airbnb for a weekend and they'll just be there as if they're away for a weekend.

And there's cameras all around the lab, the couple of wired up. So it's taking all their senses, you know, like heart rate, skin, all of these things you get in physiological states and they just watch them and they just analyze the video and they looked at how they talk to each other. I looked at how they disagreed. And interim government claims that he can think he said ninety seven percent. He can claim who's going to which relationships are going to last and which aren't.

Primarily on how they argue it's not if they are arguing isn't the sign of a problem, it's how you argue. So to set this up first by because what we've done so said basically most of what I've learned on relationships is based on the comments and then I've looked at so the governments that goal. So they differ from someone like Hovell Hendriks, whose goal is to be very idealistic. And they have a story that relationships are part of the journey.

And so it's a bit of a leap. It's not maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but it's not provable. Whereas the governments are very much only work on provable. And he's spoken that their goal is to help couples and be able to have a pastry together. It's not to be anything more than that. It's not any great spiritual or that it's just to be able to have a functioning relationship. So that's where they came from. Now, John Gottman for 20 years, never had any theories.

He had lots of research data, but he never intervened, never did anything. And it was only when he met his now wife and she'd been working as a therapist. And she was deeply and as a as a therapist....