Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm a rubber puff.

Relationships, whether there are our soulmate, whether they're our family, whether they're our friend, or perhaps they're just someone we just met,

or even someone that we struggle with.

They can be complicated, they can be difficult, they can be hard to know what to do in these relationships,

particularly when we struggle with them.

And sometimes we have a real tendency when things don't go right with another person to focus

on what that other person did and how they wronged us.

For example, in my practice as a clinical psychologist, I have worked with a lot of couples

over the past three decades. And what I typically see, not always, but typically I'll see,

the one person is telling me what the other person is doing wrong

and how they're so upset at them for what they've done to them.

But when the other person shares her perspective,

it's all about what the other person had done wrong to them.

There's a real tendency in our relationships

to focus on what the other person has done. And before we

begin, I want to emphasize, I do know that other people can do really awful heinous

things to us, and we didn't do anything to deserve it.

That is true.

But I think in the majority of our interaction with other people, it's a dance. We do something, they may do it a lot more, but then

we do something back. And it's a dance back and forth of hurt. I hurt you. You hurt me.

And it just goes back and forth.

Today I want to talk about what we can and cannot control,

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