Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (Goop Press)

I invite you to use Janet Hurley’s feedback wheel, a form of speaking that has four parts. It is a structure you can use to organize your thoughts and more skillfully speak up when you are hurt. This is what I recollect happened. This is what I made up about it. This is what I felt. And that all-important fourth step most speakers leave out: This w

Start with this. Swear off unkindness; swear off disrespect. Before you open your mouth, ask yourself: “Does what I am about to say fall below the line of basic respect? Is there a chance my the listener will experience it that way?”

The Age of Enlightenment swept away the received authority of faith and ushered in the new gods of reason, science, and empiricism—and created the individual as a political unit, the stand-alone rugged individualist.

I call the harmony phase of a relationship love without knowledge; I call the disharmony phase knowledge without love. Now you know exactly and precisely all your partner’s flaws and blemishes.

Before words leave your mouth, you pause and ask yourself: “Does what I’m about to say fall below the level of basic respect?” If you judge what you’re about to say as disrespectful, I have great advice for you. Shut up. And pledge, sincerely, from this moment forward, to do your best to curb actions and words that shame another.

Soft power. When you need to speak up, be artful. Take care of your partner as best you can by explicitly cherishing them and your relationship. Start by letting them know you need repair, is this a good time? If your partner agrees to talk, thank them, start off with an appreciation—something you are thankful for that your partner has said or done

They think they’re Wise Adults, but they’re not. The world has mostly rewarded them handsomely. Because the Adaptive Child reflects the cultural values at large, people who primarily live from their Adaptive Child parts are generally great successes in the world financially and professionally. Meanwhile they make a hash of their personal lives.

As a couples therapist, I have three sources of information: what the partners report about themselves and each other, how they behave in front of me, and how I feel witnessing their behavior.

Virtually all the couples I see in extremis, like Stan and Lucy, lack a mechanism of correction.