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All About Communication and Your Relationship
Transcription of interview with Laurie Puhn on May 7, 2012.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Laurie Puhn is the author of the national bestselling book Fight Less, Love More: 5-Minute
Conversations to Change Your Relationship without Blowing Up or Giving In. She has a
BA and Law degree from Harvard and she is a couples mediator.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Puhn on Arutz Sheva Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: In the book, you talk about the importance of couples not having to talk
more but just to talk better. Is that the same as when we talk about having quality
time with your kids?
Laurie Puhn: It’s actually different because with children the time spent together whether
you’re cooking, cleaning, doing errands or driving places in the car, is valuable
as it shows that mommy or daddy is here, they’re present. For couples, we understand that we’re
busy. We have our jobs and we have child care responsibilities, so finding time is hard,
but what we really do need is to talk better in the moments that we have together because
we can’t always get away for a date night, and some of us cannot afford a sitter or we
don’t have family nearby. It’s about saying the right thing at the right time, in the
moment. What I found as a couples mediator, and I served on the board of the Harvard Mediation
Program while I was at law school there and I was doing mediation, was that many family
members who ended up with legal disputes in small claims court and needed mediation all
tended to have one problem. It’s that they just put their foot in their mouth again and
again. You could almost listen to the foot getting off the floor and entering the mouth.
You could hear it happening with something like, “Every time I come to your store,
you’re always rude to me,” and you would think, “Was that necessary? You’re trying
to reach a settlement with your dry cleaner!”
My point is that when people don’t know how to say the right thing at the right time,
the more they talk, the worse it is.
Douglas Goldstein: So why do they keep talking?
Laurie Puhn: Because their goal is to win, and the person is only thinking about what
they mean. They’re not thinking about how the words are heard. They’re not thinking
about values, because values are actually the underlying principle of persuasion that
work out in the world, which is if we want people to respect us and like us and appreciate
us then we need to persuade them and the way we do that is by showing respect, appreciation,
and kindness, to others, and cooperation.
When we’re so busy wanting everybody to do what we want, we forget that people are
there for us and people care about us when we show concern for them. If you wake in the
morning, do you say good morning to your spouse or do you say, “Honey, can you take care
of this today?” What I’m saying is the good morning is the kind and respectful way
to start the day. It’s what would you say to a stranger, and yet we get so emboldened
in our lives. “My husband/wife, he/she knows that I love them. He knows it and honestly,
I have so many things to do in a day, I can’t always worry about sending that 30-second
email or a 2-second text message to say I’m thinking about you. That’s just too much
for me.”
What I have to say to that is “Okay, that’s fine, but you have to realize that you’re
going to end up with a bad relationship or a divorce.” People say it takes work to
stay happily married, but what is that work? It’s actually not that hard. It just takes
minutes. It’s like a 5-minute conversation. It takes minutes, maybe even seconds, but
it won’t happen unless you decide it. Even the best of us, even the most in love, we’re
all in a downward slope and that is what we come to expect from our mate, we come to neglect
and we have to do the opposite to make it work. Give a compliment a day, look to say
thank you for little things like setting the table, opening up the wine bottle, getting
your toothpaste, or putting the soap in the shower so there’s a new one there, and you’re
not saying, “Not again.”
How about when you’re standing in the shower, and there’s no soap there, how do you feel?
You feel an irritation and what we should do in that moment is say, “I know I’m
a little bit irritated, but I’ll put a new soap there.” But instead you walk out of
the shower and forget to put the soap in, so you’ve been as bad as your wife. Is soap
really the be all and end all in our relationship? Actually, yes it is because the real life
obstacles that come our way like health issues, children’s issues, and whatnot are all things
where we need to have a friendship, a love and a connection before they happen, and the
connection is to think through the daily words that we say and don’t say and the things
we do and don’t do, like the soap.
Douglas Goldstein: Are people able to really improve their relationship through communication
without sounding canned?
Laurie Puhn: I don’t come from a psychological background. I’m not a therapist who says,
“Sit down on the couch, hold hands and tell your mate why you think he’s horrible, but
then give him a loving kiss after to make sure you’re staring in each other’s eyes
as you explain how hurt you are by the action.” That’s completely ridiculous. I get the
sentiment and the idea of creating and understanding empathy, but what’s realistic is that you’re
upset and you need to know do I pick this or not. I look at it not from the psychological
perspective but from that of a mediator or the legal perspective and that’s my mindset.
I’ve seen it work for people, even people who are more emotional and they started to
grapple with the logic. For instance, do you pick a battle? Well, there’s one wise question
to ask yourself and that will tell you whether to pick it and the question is, “Does this
affect me?” If the answer is no because it’s your mate having something to do with
his friend, his family, or something random, or his car then just know. If your wife comes
home wet from the rain and you had told her to take an umbrella and she walks in the door
wet and grumpy, you want to say, “I told you to take an umbrella,” to which the response
will be, “I like getting wet.” We know that that’s common sense too, but does the
fact that he or she is wet really affect you? No, so just say “Can I get you a towel?”
My point is that it’s not canned, because the person who is now the recipient of basically
getting a pass and not being criticized again is happy about that, and when you disagree
with someone to say, “Why do you think that?” and listen before we say, “You’re wrong,
here’s what I think,” the person actually feels respected. If you give a compliment
a day, don’t go for the tie and the new haircut, which will grow out and change and
are about looks and can be superficial, go for the character compliment: “You are so
kind and generous to your friends who know that they can call you and you’ll be there
for them,” or, “That was so wonderful the way that you spent time with our son going
over the math homework, or how you took your mother to the doctor.”
Douglas Goldstein: It sounds more confrontational or dealing with the confrontation the same
way you would advise a businessman to go into a negotiation, as opposed to saying “What
can I do to most improve my marriage now?”
Laurie Puhn: Think of it this way, in a business negotiation, you know that you’re trying
to have a long term relationship and you don’t say or do things that are going to upset them
and cause resentment and vengeance. Why would we want to do that in our marriage? Why is
marriage free for all where it’s okay to say really bad things or to say something
without a purpose or without a thought?
Sometimes someone’s going to throw something, it might happen. Curses happen sometimes.
It’s not the worst thing in the world, but if you can know when it’s happening and
have a little red flag that goes up and says, “I need a break. I need a minute. I need
to breathe,” or just recognize, “I’m clearly not focusing on finding a solution.
So I’m having the kind of battle that’s going to become a revolving door and we’re
going to do it all night and we’re probably have the same one again next week.” You
really have to just make that choice. Are we fighting to reach a solution, or am I fighting
to win, and those two things are opposite.
There’s no purpose on having money if it’s not because it represents a goal or security
or because there are particular things that you want to buy or use it for. The conflicts
that emerge are saying, “You want this, I want that, how do we find to compromise?”
and that is a communication issue because I’ve mentioned before a lot of times people
are not sharing what they’re really wanting. They’re not sharing their fears, and it
is unknowable why a person wants to save so much more than the other person unless we
talk about what it is you want your life to look like 20 years from now. People can find
out more through my website at www.fightlesslovemore.com.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered
through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried
by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article. While it is
believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected. The original
podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/. All information on this website is purely
information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions. The opinions rendered
herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas Goldstein, Profile Investment
Services, Ltd., or Israel National News. Readers should consult with a professional financial
advisor before making any financial decisions. Please see the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.