If you want to know whether or not a relationship is healthy or whether or not a couple's really going to make it,

you don't want to examine how your relationship is on the good days. you want to examine and look for what happens

after you get into an argument. But there's also something else. There's how many arguments

you're getting into. There's how you feel internally about your partner.

If you are resentful, if you are feeling resistant towards them,

if all of a sudden you just don't even want to sleep with them,

you don't want them to touch you.

Or every time they mess up a little bit,

it's like you create a whole story, a whole narrative around who they are and whether or not

they love you. I've talked about repair on the show before, and you can always check out that

episode where I talk about very

specific communication skills and styles. But there's something that's just as important.

In fact, it precedes communication. You can learn all the best communication techniques

on how to repair and how to stop a fight, how to connect with your

partner. But if you don't do this one thing first, if you're not aware of this one thing first,

then no amount of good communication skills and no amount of communication courses or communication

books you read is going to help. And that is the meaning that we give to whatever is happening.

You see, we can get very trapped in our heads and create an entire narrative

about someone, specifically someone who we are in a relationship with. Some people, and you

might see yourself in this, are really good at finding a negative meaning behind someone else's

intention or they are very good or you're just very good at finding negative meanings in just

everything in other words something happens and then you see the glass half empty instead of the glass

...