Transcript of Moment 200: Love Expert Reveals Why 80% Of Modern Relationships Fail

Our relationships, I think we all, certainly I think I have for much of my life, and I say that because I look at my actions. So what I might say is different to how I think I've behaved over the last 10, 15 years. We see them as an afterthought to everything else in many regards. The amount of effort I put into my businesses and to the podcast and to every little detail, the creativity, the thought, the brainstorming, all of that, the Relationships, we all just think they just happen. If it doesn't happen perfectly, then it's broken and I need to find a new one.

Yeah, that's a terrible way to think. I mean, and everybody knows it. If you give the best of yourself at work, if you bring the leftovers home, if when you come home, you say, I've given everything I had. Now I'm just putting my feet on the table. I just need to chill. I don't want to make any effort. Slowly, your relationship relationship degrades, period. And then there's all kinds of ways it ends. None of them are particularly joyful. Basically, if people were able to put a little bit of creativity, attention, attention into their relationships as they do with their customers or their guests, relationships would be doing a lot better and my profession would be seeing a lot less people. There's no doubt. And Why are people so lazy, so complacent, so unimaginative with their relationships at home? I see so many people when you... Here, you're not taking out your phone. You're looking at me, you're You're getting attention on occasion, you look for your questions and where we go. But basically, you're with me. But at home, if you do this or this- Looking at my phone. And And then when the person tells you something really important, you go, and you're there but not present.

That's the beginning of a modern loneliness, actually, is that this idea that you can share something really important to someone who is half there, half there. And I think that that's what's happening with a lot of younger people these days, is that they experience a lot of half their-ness. That begins to cultivate a real sense of loneliness that has to do not with I'm physically alone. That has to do with, do I matter? Who hears me? Who cares? Who pays attention? Who notices? Sometimes the advice is very banal. It's to tell people, put your freaking phone down. Take an hour and put your phone down.

But I'm busy.

Huh? But I'm busy. Well, you will be busy and there won't be a relationship. Sooner or later, there won't be a relationship. It's not difficult. You can wait. You can wait for the kids to grow up if there are kids involved, things like that. But in the end, there isn't.

Just because someone was on their phone?

Well, it's not just on the phone. It's on the phone means I am continuously saying something is more important than you. We come last. We're a cactus. We don't need to be watered. We can survive in a desert. It's called... There's a term I've been using for this that I borrow from something else. It's called ambiguous loss. Have you ever heard of this term?

Ambiguous loss? Yeah. No.

Ambiguous loss is a term that was developed by a colleague, Pauline Boss, a wonderful psychologist. When she talked about what happens when you have a parent, for example, that has Alzheimer's. They are physically present, but they are psychologically gone. They're emotionally absent. You can't really mourn them because they're still physically there, but you're caught in this in between, in this ambiguous loss. On the other side, you can have somebody who is deployed, hostage, miscarriage. They are emotionally very present, but they are physically absent. In both cases, it's an ambiguous loss. You can't... Are they still there or Or are they gone? Who knows? When we live with this phone thing, because you've been at work, you've been at a computer, you come home, you think, I'm so happy to finally let go of the computer, you turn on the TV, you turn on the TV, and then you turn on the phone at the same time. You're watching here, you're watching there, and there's a person next to you. And most likely, they often do the same thing in the end, too. And gradually, there is less and less of a thread of conversation of connection, of joy, of sex, of intimacy, all of what...

That becomes ambiguous loss. Somebody is there, but they're not really present. Is there a difference between me and the sofa? It's comfy. It's routine. You sit on me. But comfy and routine do not give us joy or meaning or relevance or connection. Action. And that's what we still seem to want. So it means saying to people, it's actually not very, very complicated. What did people do for centuries? They took walks. That's one of the few times you can't click. So take a walk. Don't sit. Don't try to take a walk around the block and just be in motion. Then you're parallel. It's not face to face, it's side by side. It's great. And you can talk about the day. If you, instead of just saying, Stop, stop, stop, you just said, Let's go for a walk. It's London, but still, you can... And you do half an hour walk. You'll come back to me and you tell me what it will do. But it's amazing how these small interventions that are playful, creative, not digging, change the dynamic of the relationship because she is only pursuing you in part because of how much you are withdrawing.

You change, she change. If you want to change the other, change yourself. Once you understood the figure eight and how we create the other, you understand that if you do something else, sooner or later, they do something else, too. If you want to change the other, change you. This is part of the question you asked me, right? What are some of the essential understandings of working with relational systems? This is true at work, in companies. This is true in intimate relationships. This is not just for romantic love. This is foundations of relational systems. Feedback loop, it's called in cybernetics.

So many busy couples can feel the spark in their relationship waning away slowly, but work isn't necessarily the first place you look. Pulling out the phone at dinner isn't necessarily the place people look because that seems so small. So they aim at bigger things. They'll say, I don't know, something bigger. But are you saying that you believe a lot of it, much of it often starts with those small moments of disconnection where the person basically ends up becoming the sofa.

The Godmans call them bids for connection.

Bids for connection.

It's the little things. It's the difference between turning towards someone or turning away. When you read something, there's a classic example they give. Do you read something? Do you actually say, Hey, did you read this? Let me send you this article. That's a bid for connection. It's not a big declaration, but it says, We're in this together. When I see something that's interesting that I think you would like to read as well, I share it with you. I'm thinking of you. I know you exist even if I'm not with you.

Do you know what my partner said to me something about a year ago? We stayed with me because I thought, That's such It's a strange thing to say. She said to me when we were in conflict resolution, so we were talking about things, she said, Why don't I send you things on Instagram, in Instagram DMs? I'll be out here now in New York. If she sees something interesting on Instagram, she sends it to me. She goes, You've stopped acknowledging it. I used to just double tap on it or make a comment back. She goes, You've stopped acknowledging it. I thought, Why does that matter? You send me something, I watch the funny video, I crack on with my day.

Because it's like when you receive a birthday gift, do you think? Yeah. When you buy a birthday gift, is it important to give it? Yeah. Okay, that's the reason. I mean, How would she know that you watched it if there is no acknowledgement? And the acknowledgement is not about the video or the DM. The acknowledgement is we share something.

Well, it's even worse because it says seen on Instagram. So It says that I've seen it.

Yes, but the seen it means that I have seen the video. The acknowledgement is we are part of a thread. We're connected. She's absolutely right. So in that sense, when people lose the spark, it is a lot of these small details that people say so much in the beginning, all the positive stuff that people use. It's actually only more important with time rather than less important with time. The death of a relationship is when people take each other for granted. When you stop acknowledging those things, it is part of the mechanisms of taking for granted.